Exploring Telford
The Railways of Telford
This section, newly begun in May 1999, is progressing only slowly. There were a great many horsedrawn wooden, and later metal, plateways in the Telford area, some of which have become roads, streets and paths, others of which have vanished without trace, and there is no chance of a comprehensive survey. Hopefully this will evolve into an account of some of the more traceable bits, but at the moment it is little more than a list of possibilities.
There have been many railways, tramways and plateways down the Dale during its history. In 1910, apart from the passenger railway, one remained, running from Coalbrookdale Iron Works (still working) to the Severn Foundry (now an antique shop and a teddy-bear factory!)
Only eight years after the canal from Brierly Hill was opened, the first section was abandoned and replaced by a plateway running "along the towpath to Horsehay", as Richard Morriss says; but the canal did not go to Horsehay, which stands on higher ground. I wondered for some time if the plateway followed the modern footpath running from Crackshall Lane to Stoney Hill, reaching Woodlands Lane higher up than the canal, but it need not be so. The plateway might have followed the canal to the north western end of what is now Johnson's Pipes at Doseley, where it is immediately below Horsehay, and continues along the bank of the brook as it rises towards Spring Village through Horsehay. What now appears to be a very steep bank there is only partly natural: quarrying of the Johnsons site and landfill under the Horsehay steelworks have accentuated the gradient.
However, I have not been able to find any traces in Horsehay, unless the gravel road running alongside the Horsehay works from Frame Lane to Bridge Road was it.
The path from Madeley Court School to Tweedale was a tramway, passing under the brick bridge on the Tweedale side of the Silkin Way to the canal basin there.
There was a plateway from Madeley which in 1910 ran parallel to Ironbridge Road from Lees Farm Roundabout at the top of the hill before turning onto what is now Roberts Road. I do not know where it originated: did it connect with the above? At Harris's Lane it forked, both the straight-on and the left turns of this modern crossroads being tamways, that to the left serving a Brick and Tile Works on the map, the other Woodlands Brick and Tile Works. A few traces remain of the latter, south of the Madeley Union Workhouse, which became The Beeches hospital, and now is something else again.
This is pure speculation.
The Lilleshall Company had a stable, which still stands, at the bottom of Lightmoor Road. This may have been central for a number of plateways, if any or all of the following were such: all are in the main almost straight and have steady, shallow gradients despite the undulations of the surrounding fields: