DAWLEY
Communications, p. 106. Growth of Settlement, p. 107. Social and Cultural Activities, p. 111. Manors and Other
Estates, p. 112. Economic History, p. 115. Local Government, p. 125. Public Services, p. 126. Churches, p. 127.
Roman Catholicism, p. 130. Protestant Nonconformity, p. 131. Education, p. 133. Charities for the Poor, p. 135.
The industrial parish of Dawley in the heart of
the east Shropshire coalfield became an urban
district in the 19th century and the centre of a new
town in the 20th. The ancient parish contained
2,790 a. (1,123 ha.) in three townships: Malinslee
(862 a.) in the north-east, Great Dawley (997 a.)
in the centre, and Little Dawley (931 a.) in the
south-west. (fn. 1) The urban district was enlarged to
3,259 a. (1,319 ha.) in 1934 by the addition of
parts of Priorslee, Stirchley, and Wellington Rural
civil parishes. (fn. 2) In 1966 Dawley U.D. was extended to 9,461 a. (3,829 ha.) to coincide approximately with the area that had been designated as
Dawley new town in 1963. Madeley, (fn. 3) the remainder of Stirchley, and parts of Benthall,
Broseley, Kemberton, Oakengates, Priorslee,
Shifnal, Sutton Maddock, Little Wenlock, and
Wellington Rural C.P.s were added to Dawley,
and 12 a. (5 ha.) at Hollinswood were transferred
to Oakengates U.D. (fn. 4) This article treats the history of the ancient parish of Dawley only.
Dawley was a compact area c. 5 km. in length
from north-east to south-west and c. 2 km. wide,
on the central plateau of the coalfield. The highest
land was along the parish's north-western edge,
where the ground rises to 208 metres above O.D.
near Dawley Bank. The land falls gently to the
south-east in Malinslee and Great Dawley
townships, but in Little Dawley relief is more
marked. Horsehay dingle bisects the township,
and the parish's southern boundary followed
Loamhole and Lightmoor brooks, which flow
through deeply incised valleys to converge at the
head of Coalbrookdale. Elsewhere the parish
boundary did not follow marked physical features, but Dawley was contained on the northwest by a watershed that separated streams draining to the Severn and the Weald Moors, and on
the north-east by the Randlay valley.
Most of the parish was underlain by the Coal
Measures. Only in the Horsehay and Little Dawley areas, where Lower Carboniferous sandstones
and Little Wenlock basalt outcrop, was there a
lack of workable seams of coal and ironstone.
Productive Middle Coal Measures lay near the
surface along the north-west edge of the parish
from Old Park to Heath Hill, and in the south at
Lightmoor. East of the Lightmoor fault in
Malinslee and Great Dawley the seams lay deeper, under siltstones and sandstones of the Upper
Coal Measures. The drift cover is mainly boulder
clay, but glacial sands and gravels occur around
Moor Farm in the south of the parish. (fn. 5)
The small hamlets and scattered farms of a
wood-pasture economy were transformed from
the 16th century by the haphazard growth of
industrial workers' cottages as mining and, later,
iron making engulfed the parish. In Great Dawley, probably always the most populous township,
the centre of settlement had shifted by the late
18th century from the hamlet by the church to the
straggling industrial settlements of Dawley Green
and Dawley Bank. By the mid 19th century High
Street, as Dawley Green came to be known, had
gained most of the features of a small town, to
which the outlying industrial communities at
Horsehay, Dawley Bank, Old Park, Dark Lane,
and Hinkshay looked. Most land in Great Dawley
and Malinslee was scarred by the extractive industries; only in the western half of Little Dawley did
a predominantly agricultural landscape survive.
When the pits and ironworks closed in the later
19th century Dawley began to stagnate and decline. Until after the Second World War the
parish suffered unemployment and the industrial
legacies of sub-standard housing and landscape
dereliction. Dawley underwent a transformation,
social, economic, and environmental, from 1963
when it was included in the designated area of
Dawley (from 1968 Telford) new town.
The community of industrial workers that grew
in Dawley during the Industrial Revolution had
many characteristics typical of mining areas of the
day. The Dawley cottagers' 'irregularity and disorderly behaviour' were noted in the mid 18th
century. (fn. 6) The miners were at the mercy of the
coal masters and the notorious sub-contractors
called charter masters, (fn. 7) and rising food prices in
the late 18th and early 19th century led to a
succession of riots. (fn. 8) The most serious in Dawley
were the Cinderhill riots triggered by a reduction
in wages in 1821, when 3,000 colliers confronted
troops on a slag mound near Old Park. Two
rioters were killed when troops opened fire and
one of the leaders was later executed. (fn. 9)
Notable natives included Samuel Peploe (1668-
1752), the son of a Little Dawley farmer and
bishop of Chester from 1726; (fn. 10) Capt. Matthew
Webb (1848-83), the son of a Dawley physician
and the first man to swim the English Channel (in
1875); (fn. 11) Albert Stanley (1862-1915), born at
Dark Lane, the son of a Primitive Methodist
miner and eventually leader of the Cannock miners and M.P. for North-West Staffordshire; (fn. 12) and
Edith Pargeter (b. 1913), the novelist, who also
published under the name of Ellis Peters. (fn. 13) A
monument to Webb, in the form of a drinking
fountain, was placed in High Street in 1910; (fn. 14) it
was moved in 1956 (fn. 15) but returned to near its
original position in 1980. Among characters of
local note was William Ball (1795-1852), the
'Shropshire giant', a 40-stone shingler at Horsehay ironworks. (fn. 16)