Shropshire -

its history   

In spite of being the largest inland county, Shropshire is one of England's lesser known counties with a distinct character of its own. It was a Border county with many Welsh place names, and it is still possible to hear Welsh spoken in Shrewsbury and Oswestry. It has always been predominantly an agricultural county, though it was the industrial development of Ironbridge and the east Shropshire coalfield which brought Shropshire its greatest fame.

Though people have lived in the area for thousands of years, the history of Shropshire as a distinct part of England goes back to the early 10th century. During the Middle Ages the area of Shropshire varied as large areas came under the rule of the Marcher lords, and the position of the border itself fluctuated. The county took its present form during the reign of Henry VIII when the Marcher lordships were abolished and there have only been minor changes since.

Shropshire's history has been shaped in many ways by the underlying rocks which have influenced both agriculture and industry. Shropshire's geology is unusually varied;  rocks from ten of the twelve accepted geological periods can be found in the county. The pre-Cambrian rocks of the Wrekin, Lawley and Caer Caradoc are amongst the oldest in Britain. Some of the pioneer work of the early history of geology was worked out in Shropshire and names given to rocks and fossils and known all over the world were taken from Shropshire place names. Some of the most striking landscape features such as the Ironbridge gorge and the lakes around Ellesmere are evidence of the power of geological forces, in this case of the melting of glaciers at the end of the Ice Ages.

Though there is evidence of very early settlement, such as Mitchell's Fold in south Shropshire, the most obvious evidence of prehistoric settlement is the many Iron Age hillforts which crown nearly every major hill in the county. Shropshire has relatively few Roman remains, but does have the ruins of Wroxeter which beginning as a military establishment became the fourth largest town of Roman Britain. The site of Wroxeter continues to yield information about not only Roman times but also the early Dark Ages which followed the departure of the Romans.

The origins of Shrewsbury which succeeded Wroxeter as Shropshire's chief town are obscure, but it was certainly in existence and important by about 900. When William I gave most of Shropshire to Earl Roger de Montgomery after the Norman conquest Shrewsbury was the natural place for him to build his castle and make his administrative centre. Since that time until the recent growth of Telford the dominance of Shrewsbury as the county's largest and most important town has never been threatened. Most of Shropshire's other towns grew up in the 12th and 13th century, some, such as Ludlow, Newport and Bridgnorth deliberately founded as new towns, others such as Whitchurch, Shifnal and Wellington as expanded Saxon settlements.

However, during the Middle Ages and the 16th and 17th centuries Shropshire was one of England's poorer counties with much inhospitable hill country in the south and undeveloped clay and sandy soils and woodland and woodland in the north. None of the pitched battles of the Civil War took place in Shropshire, but many of the county's castles and larger houses were garrisoned and the countryside around them suffered from skirmishing, raiding and pillaging from both sides. Shropshire was a predominantly Royalist county and many of these garrisons held out against the Parliamentarians until the closing stages of the war in 1646. The attempt
of Prince Charles, later Charles II, to claim his father's crown ended in his defeat at the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Charles then took six weeks trying to escape to France;  the days of greatest danger immediately after the battle he spent zig-zagging across the Staffordshire/Shropshire border walking or riding from Boscobel to Madeley, back to Boscobel and then to Moseley Old Hall and eventually to the south-west.

In the context of national history the most significant events in Shropshire were the industrial developments of the 18th century. There had been some small-scale mining and ironworking before the 18th century (there is evidence of lead mining at the Stiperstones as long ago as Roman times), but after the first Abraham Darby began to use coke for smelting iron instead of charcoal Shropshire became known for industrial innovation, and by the late 18th century for a few years Shropshire was the leading iron producing area in Britain. The population of the area rapidly increased as workers were attracted from other parts of Shropshire and Wales.  

Engineers, writers and artists came to the Ironbridge gorge from all over Europe, not just to see the famous bridge but other innovations such as John Wilkinson's iron boat and Richard Trevithick's steam railway locomotive.

Until the mid 18th century Shropshire was one of the more remote of English counties with the River Severn as its main link to the outside world. However, during the continuing industrial prosperity of the late 18th and early 19th centuries Shropshire was in the forefront of developments in communications under its famous county surveyor, Thomas Telford, who worked on canals and roads.  As a result of his improvements to the Holyhead Road it was said to be the best road in Europe. Shropshire was one of the birthplaces of railways with a small stretch of rail from Broseley to the River Severn operating as early as 1605. The first main line railway through the county was the Shrewsbury to Chester line which opened in 1848. 

During the later 19th century railways proliferated and in the years before the First World War Shrewsbury was one of the principal railway junction of Britain. The market towns and many villages were linked to the national system with a network of lines, though some of these never made any money and had lapsed long before the Beeching cuts of the 1960s.

During the later 19th century and early 20th century iron and coal working gradually declined, many people moved away to the Black Country or South Wales and Shropshire returned to being a mainly agricultural county. It was to meet the problem of industrial dereliction and poor housing stock that Dawley New Town, later to be called Telford, was inaugurated in the 1960s. After a slow start Telford has been successful in attracting a considerable number of light industries and has recently detached itself from the county administration. Apart from Telford Shropshire remains a relatively quiet county with much unspoiled and beautiful countryside and with many reminders in its abbey ruins and country houses of its long history.

Thanks are owed to Dr S

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