Thomas Telford 1757-1834
Thomas Telford, the son of a shepherd, was born in Westerkirk, Scotland in 1757 and was
brought up by his mother. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a stonemason.
In 1787 he became the County Surveyor of Public Works for Shropshire. By this time
Telford had established a good reputation as an engineer and in 1790 was given the task
of building a bridge over the River Severn at Montford.
He designed and built public buildings and roads and bridges for the county, including
Shrewsbury Gaol. He also designed several churches at this time, St. Mary Magdalene
at Bridgnorth being a clear example of his ability. Its large windows and iron pillars make
it an unusual, though elegant, church in the classical style of its time.
He worked for a time in Edinburgh and in 1792 he moved to London where he was involved
in buliding additions to Somerset House. Two years later he worked on the rebuilding of
Portsmouth Docks.
In 1793 Telford took the post of Surveyor and Engineer to the Ellesmere Canal Co. and in
1795 gained the similar post with the Shrewsbury Canal. In that year construction on the
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct began for the Ellesmere Canal. On this aqueduct Telford used a
new method of constructon consisting of troughs made from cast-iron plates and fixed in
masonry.
For much of his canal work Telford worked with William Jessup as his assistant. Jessup
was a skilled engineer in his own right but they seem to have worked well as a team. Telford
had a number of assistants for the other tasks he was carrying out. He is said to have been
a hard taskmaster, though each found they had clear written instruc tions and drawings of
exactly what they were supposed to do.
After completion of the Ellesmere Canal Telford moved back to Scotland where, in 1801, he
took control of the building of the Caledonian Canal. Though construction started in 1804,
it took until 1822 to finish. The A5 London to Holyhead road also came in for Telford's atten-
tion. The road was of national importance and particularly the western sections were in poor
condition. Telford's improvements included straightening the alignment, easing the gradients
using cuttings and embankments and the rebuilding of bridges. His design work covered
every detail, including the toll houses on the way.
During his life he built more than one-thousand miles of road including the Shrewsbury to
Holyhead road and the North Wales coast road between Chester and Bangor. An economic
slump after the Napoleonic wars led the Government to offer cheap loans to encourage public
works. Telford became the engineering advisor to the Exchequer Loans Commission in 1817.
This entailed touring the country surveying and inspecting the proposed sites and plans for
those projects seeking a loan.
It meant that for a time he saw nearly every civil engineering project in the country. It was in
1820 that Telford was asked to survey the Birmingham Canals to suggest ways of improving
them. He was not only shocked by the appalling state of the waterways, but does not seem to
have approved of Birmingham itself:-
". . . Famous for Buttons, Buckles and Locks and Ignorance and Barbarism. Its
prosperity increases upon the corruption of Taste and Morals."
The modifications to the BCN took longer than expected and by the time they were complet-
ed in 1827, Telford was involved in the construction of the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction
Canal ( it starts to the west of Wolverhampton despite its name ).
This was to be his final major work. The canal (nowadays called the Shropshire Union) used
a similar approach to that employed in Birmingham. It had an almost straight route and used
cuttings and embankments to cope with minor hills and valleys. Locks were used only where
there was a permanent rise or fall in ground level.
Telford, having died in 1834, did not live to see the completion of the work in 1835.
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October 27, 1999
