User:Asdfasdf1231234/Telford

Early History
Early settlement in the area was thought to be on the land that sloped up from the Weald Moors (an area north of the town centre) towards the line along which the Roman Watling Street was built. Farmland surrounded three large estates in the tenth century, namely Wellington, Wrockwardine and Lilleshall.

From the 13th century there was urban development in Wellington and Madeley, where Wenlock Priory founded a new town. Six monastic houses, founded in the 11th and 12th centuries, had large interests in the area's economic growth. They collectively acquired almost half of the area, and profited from coal and ironstone mines and iron smithies on their estates. Coal and iron industries on a large scale, however, grew up only from the mid 17th century. In the 18th century local insutry was tranformed by technological advancement, and by 1806 the area boasted Britain's second largest ironworks. In this period, the landscape was transformed by clearance of much of the remaining woodland and the spread of mining. Subsequently, canals, roads, railways, and sprawling industrial settlements were developed to service the new economy. However, the southern end of the coalfield began to lose its economi viability after the mid 19th century and, after some recovery in the 1940s and 1950s, the whole area was seriously affected by a national recession, which deepened from the late 1960s.

Economy
During the economic crisis of the late 1960s unemployment in the town was high. However, in 1967 Halesfield Industrial Estate was founded on the south-eastern edge of the town. Other large estates followed, in 1973 with Stafford Park and in 1973 with Hortonwood. In total, half a million square metres of factory space were provided between 1968 and 1983, making Telford an attractive investment area. By 1976, Telford had begun to recruit industry from the U.S.A., Europe, and Japan. The foreign firms required larger factories, and they began to be built at Stafford Park. By 1983 over 2,000 jobs in Telford were provided by around 40 (mostly American) foreign companies,  In contrast to industry in the Black County at the time, these new companies focused on high-technology industries rather than the heavy and metal-finishing industries.

The new arrivals included the American company Unimation and three firms from Japan: Nikon U.K. Ltd., which opened a warehouse at Halesfield in 1983; video tape manufacturers Hitachi Maxell at Apley Castle in 1983; and office equipment manufacturers Ricoh, who took a 22 acre site for a factory at Priorslee next to the M54, and formed the first in Telford's new enterprise zone.

Consequently, from the later 1970s, Telford began to attract high-technology firms and to diversify its industry, and the promotion of the Service industry also began to prosper, in the Telford Town Centre area. However, a deepening national recession meant that, despite the creation of new jobs, there were net job losses from 1979. Unemployment grew from 3.4 per cent in 1969 to over 8 per cent in 1972 and 22.3 per cent in 1983; long-term unemployment rose even faster. Nevertheless the rate of increase in unemployment was slowing down by 1983 and was making some progress against national and regional trends.