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Routes Around Madeley
For what at first sight appears to be a heavily built up area Madeley has a surprising amount of unspoiled open space, which can be reached by an extensive network of footpaths. We hope you will enjoy using the paths and visiting some of the places of interest.
Historic Madeley
The first recorded historical reference to Madeley dates from 727, when it was purchased by Lady Milburga, the Abbess of Much Wenlock Abbey. The Saxon name means, the clearing in the wood. By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 Madeley was valued at 50 shillings, the village of Brimidgham, modern day Birmingham, was worth 4 shillings and sixpence. In 1269 Madeley achieved town status with the granting of a charter for a weekly market and an annual fair.
Madeley has a number of listed buildings and sites which reflect its prosperity and historical significance.
Madeley Court (13) mainly 16th Century with traces of 13th Century fabric, was built as a grange for Wenlock Priory. With the Dissolution of the Monasteries it was bought in 1554 by Robert Brooke, Speaker of the House of Commons, and stayed in the family until the 18th Century. 17th Century additions include the stone porch, gatehouse, sundial, garden walls and water mill. It was tenanted by Abraham Darby the First from 1709 until his death in 1717.
Upper House (8) in Church Street is said to have been built circa 1621 by Francis Woolf. The Coach House and Barn was used a hiding place by the future King Charles the Second fleeing from defeat after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Church Street also embraces The Little Haye, probably a two bay medieval hall, and a number of 17th and 18th Century buildings which include The Old Hall, with coach house, barn and stables: Hall Cottages, The Old Vicarage, the home of John Fletcher from 1776 to 1785, and the church of St. Michael (7) rebuilt in 1796 on the site of the former church, which in turn is believed to have been built on a pre-Christian earthwork.
The octagonal church, one of only two buildings in Telford actually designed by Thomas Telford, contains the remains of a monument to the Brooke family. In the churchyard there are several cast iron tombs, including those of two ironmasters, William Baldwin 1822 and R.R.Anstice 1853, also a cast iron tomb chest of John Fletcher, vicar of St. Michael's in the 18th Century and his wife Mary a prominent early Methodist lay preacher. The Swiss-born paster was one of the principal theologians of the Evangelical Revival of the 18th Century. John Fletcher was a close friend of John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism and, as a result, the Methodist Church flourished in the area. The Fletcher Memorial Methodist Church in Court Street is believed to be the only Methodist Church in the world to be named after an Anglican clergyman.
The Fletcher Memorial Methodist Church, a large chapel built in the classical style, was opened in 1841 to replace the earlier Wesleyan Chapel of 1833 in Church Street. This Chapel had been given to the church when it became too small for its congregation, and opened as a Church of England, Infants School in 1853. The former National School in Church Street was also built in 1841. The Anstice Memorial Institute (9) was built in 1868, designed in Italianate style by John Johnson of London, as a memorial to John Anstice, proprietor and manager of the Madeley Wood Company.
Both Station Road and High Street record development through the 17th to 19th Centuries from timber-framed cottages to the buff-coloured brick houses, terraces, shops and the Victorian market hall, built in 1870, now Jubilee House, offices of Madeley Parish Council. The upper end of Park Street and Park Lane contain a number of fine houses which were the homes of the men who operated the local pits under, charter, from the landowners; indeed part of this area was once known as, Chartermasters Row.
The appearance of modern day Madeley was, probably more than any other area of Telford, shaped by the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th Centuries. By the late 18th Century Madeley was a thriving centre of the coal, iron and clay industries within the Coalbrookdale Coal Field. The spoil heaps from former pits still dominate the landscape with the largest remaining, that of the former Meadow Colliery (2) visible for miles around. Many are planted with Scots Pines, the result of a, job creation scheme, during the depression of the late 1920s and 1930s.
The earliest mines in the area were simply tunnels driven into the hillside following the seams of coal that outcropped along the sides of the Ironbridge Gorge. By the 18th Century deep mines with vertical shafts were being sunk in the parish to follow the coal seams as they dipped away to the North and East, with the first steam pumping engine in 1719 allowing miners to work the deeper, wetter seams. One of these deep mines, the Brick Kiln Leasow, or Lane Pit (1) was the scene of Madeley's worst mining disaster in 1864 when the, Nine Men of Madeley, the youngest, William Onions, was a boy of 12, were killed when the loops of chain on which they were raised and lowered became unhooked from the winding rope as they were ascending the shaft, hurling them to the bottom of the pit. Their iron-topped communal grave can be seen in St.Michael's Churchyard.
By the 18th Century the area was crisscrossed by a complex network of tramways connecting the various pits, lime workings and ironworks. A spectacular relic of this system can be seen at Blists Hill, near the All Nations pub, where Baguley's Wind (3) a 19th Century tramway inclined plane connected the Meadow Colliery with Blists Hill Ironworks via the lofty wrought iron lattice Lee Dingle Bridge. Two similar inclined planes, this time carrying small tub boats, could be found on the Shropshire Canal at Windmill Farm, on the edge of the Parish near present day Brookside, and at Great Hay (5). These inclines were mainly operated by gravity on a counterbalance system, the weight of a loaded boat being used to raise an empty one in the opposite direction.
In 1832 The Madeley Wood Company moved its ironmaking operation from Bedlam Furnaces near Ironbridge to Blists Hill (4) on the banks of the Shropshire Canal (6). Using limestone from Lincoln Hill and local coal and iron ore these furnaces continued to produce top quality pig iron until they were closed in 1912. The three furnaces of Madeley's other ironworks, the Madeley Court Works, had been closed in 1902, and are now only remembered in the name of the nearby pub.
The remains of Blists Hill Ironworks now form the a Victorian working museum containing many buildings of historical interest. These include the mid to late 19th Century brickworks, canal wharf, the Blists Hill mine, which was worked on alternate weeks for clay and coal, and the world's last working wrought iron works. The brick works closed in 1933, the neighbouring open-cast clay pit, partly filled in, is now the lower part of the Museum car park.
Modern-day Madeley is a populous and vibrant part of Telford. The (model) residential estates of Sutton Hill and Woodside were among the first to be built in the late 1960s. Madeley's past heritage, however, remains as an enduring reminder of heroic times.
Please remember the following points when using public footpaths:
More details of places of interest in the Madeley area can be found in The Madeley Tree Trail, a leaflet produced by Madeley Parish Council's Tree Wardens - copies available from Jubilee House and Madeley Library.
South Telford Rights of Way Project
Madeley Parish Council is a partner in STROWP, a project set up to define and improve access for rights of way throughout five parishes in the south of Telford. The other partners are Severn Gorge Countryside Trust, Telford and Wrekin Council and the Parish Councils of Dawley Hamlets, the Gorge, Hollinswood and Randlay, Stirchley and Brookside.
Whenever relevant, waymark discs are used to signify direction - yellows arrows for footpaths, blue arrows for bridleways.
For further information please contact:
- Alec Connah
- STROWP Project Officer
- Progress House
- Stirchley
- Telford
- TF3 1FA
- Tel: 01952 525103
