Telford Town Park is a park and Local Nature Reserve in Telford in Shropshire. In 2015, it was voted "UK's Best Park" in the inaugural public competition organised by Fields in Trust. The Anglo-Saxon period saw the first real changes made to the area later to become Telford Town Park. Early settlers cleared woodland to create land suitable for farming. T…
Telford Town Park is a park and Local Nature Reserve in Telford in Shropshire. In 2015, it was voted "UK's Best Park" in the inaugural public competition organised by Fields in Trust. The Anglo-Saxon period saw the first real changes made to the area later to become Telford Town Park. Early settlers cleared woodland to create land suitable for farming. These became the starting points for places like Dawley, Stirchley and Malinslee, the key catchment areas that surround Telford Town Park. In the 13th century much of the land around Stirchley was given to the Cistercian monks of Buildwas Abbey. It was these monks who built the original Grange at Stirchley and farmed the surrounding land until the 1530s. The relatively peaceful scene of small farmsteads separated by hedges and woodlands continued until the dramatic changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Valuable raw materials such as coal and ironstone were mined, and this produced enormous amounts of waste which created the pit mounds seen in the Park today. The Shropshire Canal ran through the Park and new industries grew up alongside the canal – iron furnaces, foundries and forges at Hinkshay and on the Stirchley Chimney site. Most of the industries belonged to the Old Park Company, set up by Isaac Hawkins Browne who lived at Stirchley Grange.
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