This seat was created at the pre-1997 boundary review, in order to give Telford a seat of its own, having previously been part of the seat called The Wrekin. The constituency is on the east of Shropshire, and has by far the smallest acreage of the five constituencies in the county.
Telford was designated a New Town, but it is actually based on some of the oldest industrial communities in the country. Iron was smelted with coke by Abraham Darby at Coalbrookdale from 1709 and perhaps the most famous place within the seat is a mile away at Ironbridge.
It is so called because the world’s first iron bridge was built there in 1779 by Abraham Darby III (grandson of the above) and today the Ironbridge Gorge Museums commemorate this genesis of the Industrial Revolution.
Furthermore, the Ironbridge Gorge on the banks of the River Severn has been designated a World Heritage Site.