Oakengates
Oakengates is a town in the borough of Telford & Wrekin and ceremonial county of Shropshire. The parish's population was recorded as 8,517 in the 2001 census.
In the late 18th century the Ketley Canal was constructed to carry coal and ironstone from Oakengates to Ketley works. The canal has long since fallen into disuse and little trace of it can be found today (see section entitled Ketley Canal for picture and more information).
The first boat lift in Britain was an experimental one built at Oakengates in 1794 by Robert Weldon of Lichfield. A full scale version was to be built on the Somerset Coal Canal at Rowley Bottom near Comber Hay, but the lift jammed and failed whilst being demonstrated; the construction was abandoned.
Although the origins of the town can be traced back to Roman times, Uxacona was a military station established in the 1st Century AD. The history of Oakengates is bound up with industry and its location on the East Shropshire Coalfield. Coal has been mined in the area for centuries; there are records showing that the Monks of Wombridge Priory mined and sold coal during the medieval period.
But it was during the 18th and 19th Centuries that Oakengates developed into one of the principal mining and manufacturing centres on the coalfield. The Lilleshall Company, founded by the Leverson Gower family, later to become the Dukes of Sutherland; was established in 1764 and grew into a major industrial organisation centred on the Oakengates district with controlling interests in iron, coal, canals and railways transport.
As County Surveyor Thomas Telford improved the nationally important Holyhead Road past Oakengates and a further boost to trade came with the arrival of the main Wolverhampton to Shrewsbury railway line in 1848 leading to growth and prosperity in the late 19th and early 20th Century.
However, the manufacturing decline set in from the 1950’s and 60’s with the downsizing and eventual closure of many of the town’s ironworks and mines; Granville Colliery, to the north east of the town, was the last deep mine on the coalfield when it closed in 1979.
Oakengates became part of the New Town when Dawley was expanded north of the A5 trunk road and re-named Telford in 1968.