Born into an impoverished family in an isolated valley in Scotland, Thomas Telford’s innate intellect, drive, and energy led him to become one of Great Britain’s greatest civil engineers. His prolific life-work consisted of the construction of a treasure trove of roads, bridges, tunnels, canals, harbors, and churches in the British Isles. His handiwork is still indelibly etched into the landscape of Great Britain today.
After moving to Edinburgh, Telford became a stonemason’s apprentice at the age of fourteen. In 1782 he went to London and attached himself to an architect charged with the construction of Somerset House. His work in London likely attracted the attention of Sir William Pulteney, a Member of Parliament from Shrewsbury. Through Pulteney’s patronage, Telford became the Surveyor of Public Works for Shropshire in 1787. While serving in this position, he undertook a number of building projects. The first important one was the renovation of Shrewsbury Castle. Telford supervised the reconstruction of this abandoned ruin and turned it into a residence for his patron. The edifice even included a special addition known as Laura’s Tower for Pulteney’s wife.
Following the Shrewsbury Castle project, Telford acquired further work in the area. In 1788 he conducted the initial excavation of an old Roman City at Wroxeter. He also built the roof of St. Mary Magdalene’s Church in Bridgnorth and served as a consultant on the repairs to the roof of St. Chad’s Church in Shrewsbury, where he noted that the leaking roof needed substantial work. Ironically, three days after his report the old church collapsed entirely. In addition, Telford also helped to rebuild Shrewsbury Prison and repair St. Michael’s Church in Madeley. In 1790 Telford designed a span to carry the London-Holyhead Road over the Severn River at Montford. This bridge was the first of forty that he helped to construct in Shrewsbury. His bridge at Buildwas became his first iron bridge, an influence from other iron bridges being constructed in the era.
By the early 1790s Telford’s reputation had soared. He was a consultant on the renovation of London Bridge in 1800 and in the following year worked on the Caledonian Canal and thirty-two churches in Scotland. He also received an appointment to design and build the Ellesmere Canal, a project to connect the ironworks and mines of Wrexham with the town of Chester using the existing Chester Canal and the Mersey River. The construction of the canal required innovative engineering techniques that won Telford additional recognition. One such example was the Pontcysylite Aqueduct, an impressive structure that crossed over the Dee River at a height of 126 feet. Telford’s engineering marvel employed a construction process whereby he made troughs from cast iron plates fixed in masonry mixed with bull’s blood for additional skeletal strength. He also reinforced the joints with flannel soaked in syrup and boiled for hours. The aqueduct obtained the local title of the ‘‘waterway in the sky.’’ Its symmetry and aesthetic appeal moved Sir Walter Scott to declare it to be a remarkable work of art. The Ellesmere Canal opened in 1805.
Shortly afterward, Telford obtained the commission to construct the Shrewsbury Canal, an important artery designed to haul huge amounts of coal and raw materials. The original engineer died and Telford stepped in. The seventeen-mile canal required extraordinary engineering skill to complete its eleven locks, eight lift bridges, and a nearly 1000-yard tunnel at Berwick.
Telford’s canal and aqueduct phase continued for a number of years. Between 1796 and 1801, he built the Chirk aqueduct over the Ceiriog River. It was seventy feet high and consisted of ten spans, and is noteworthy because it is half in England and half in Wales. In 1810 he served as the engineer for the Gota Canal in Sweden. He also worked on aqueducts in Scotland and returned to Shropshire to construct his final but most impressive canal, the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal (today a portion of the Shropshire Union Canal) from 1826 to 1835. Although he died before its completion, this project linked the Birmingham Canal network at Wolverhampton with the sea at Ellesmere Port and smaller canal tentacles along the route and continued its commercial traffic use until 1958.
Following his tireless efforts in canal and aqueduct construction, Telford turned to road building. The British government was so impressed with his previous work that it selected him for the important project to transform the London-Holyhead Road. Parliament appropriated the unheard of sum of 750,000 pounds for the endeavor. The road would become the ultimate achievement for a man whose crown already consisted of a number of priceless jewels. The port of Holyhead was the important embarkation point for the sea crossing
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Form Wales to Dublin, Ireland. This connection had gained significance with the Act of Union in 1800. But the journey across Wales entailed traversing wild, rugged, and perilous terrain, hindering efforts to respond to the growing need for more rapid communication between England and Wales and Ireland. One of the main interests for the construction of the road was to speed mail service to Ireland. The highest speed obtained by staged coaches on the route until this time was approximately ten miles per hour. However, this pace dropped significantly when the coaches entered the mountains in Wales.
Telford surveyed the possible route and submitted his plans to Parliament in 1811. Parliament was slow to act and did not provide funds for an additional four years. Furthermore, seven turnpike trusts controlled the existing path route, and Telford had to employ extraordinary skills of negotiation to procure the entire route from the trusts. The portion of the road from London to Shrewsbury was not too difficult to construct. Indeed, an existing path dating back to the Roman era provided a clear route to follow. It was the part of the road from Shrewsbury to Holyhead (a distance of 106 miles) that presented the largest obstacle. Telford worked diligently to refashion the route. He used the existing path controlled previously by the turnpike trusts and reduced the gradients in key places, constructed bridges over the rivers, and attempted to ensure that travelers would have the smoothest ride possible. It should be noted that the A5 highway today follows Telford’s route almost without modification. Interestingly, Telford employed a technique in road building as old as the Romans. He first placed a layer of stones on the road bed and then covered them with gravel to allow for proper drainage. This approach helped to ensure a long-lasting roadway. Today the route is basically unchanged, and Telford’s roadway supports heavy vehicles and traffic that moves five times faster than the coaches of his day. The poet laureate, Robert Southey, used a pun to declare Telford as the ‘‘Colossus of Roads.’’
A second major challenge faced Telford. He had to construct a bridge across the Menai Straits from Bangor to the Isle of Anglessy. The purpose of the bridge was to replace the existing ferry that had to struggle against dangerous tidal and rapid currents that swirled in several directions. Indeed, in 1785 a vessel transporting fifty-five people capsized, stranding the passengers on a sandbar during a violent windstorm. By the time rescuers arrived the next day, they found only one survivor. Furthermore, the straits had to be open for shipping, which meant that a bridge had to be erected at least 100 feet above the water to permit the masts of vessels to pass safely underneath. The result of Telford’s effort was the magnificent Menai Bridge, a suspension span that became a marvel of engineering skill and aesthetic beauty.
Construction on the Menai Bridge began in 1819 and was completed in early 1836 when a London mail coach crossed the bridge for the first time. Telford designed the bridge and secured contractors and labor to build it. He also created milestones along the way and designed the wrought-iron gates and toll houses that dotted the road. One of the old toll house boards depicted the type of traffic that crossed the bridge in its early days as well as the assessed tolls: a coach or carriage on springs (four shillings); a wagon or cart drawn by a horse or mule solely for the purpose of carrying or going to fetch lime for manure (one and one-half shillings); and a drove of cattle, pigs, sheep, or lambs (five shillings).
Thomas Telford’s legacy in the field of engineering is nearly unfathomable. It is estimated that he was responsible for at least 1,100 bridges in Scotland alone and that 22,000 people could be seated in the churches he constructed or renovated. As a result, he obtained recognition for his achievements not only in his lifetime but even in more recent years. He is universally recognized as the father of civil engineering. In 1820 he was appointed as the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a position he retained until he died in 1834. In a fitting tribute, he was buried in the nave at Westminster Abbey. Furthermore, In 1968 Dawley New Town renamed itself Telford in his honor, and in 1990 the city also designated one of its technology colleges as the Thomas Telford School. Thomas Telford’s extraordinary engineering skills connected the disparate parts of Great Britain with a spider-like network of bridges, roads, canals, and docks and dotted many communities with new or improved houses of worship. The cumulative result of his work contributed in no small part to the nation’s unprecedented economic growth in the first half of the 19th century.
World History
