The Media Archive for Central England is the public screen archive for the East and West Midlands. An independent charity and company based at the University of Lincoln, MACE acquires, catalogues, preserves and makes widely available moving image materials that inform our understanding of the diverse cultures and histories of communities between the Lincolnshire coast and the Welsh border.
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Madeley Before Redevelopment
Views of historic Madeley in Shropshire during the winter of 1967, as the spectre of a new town looms.
From the collection of:
Overview
The historic settelement of Madeley in Shropshire was one of the areas that formed the Dawley New Town development (renamed 'Telford' in 1968 after the engineer Thomas Telford (1757-1834)). These scenes were filmed in October, 1967 and, apart from the mud on the streets caused by the constant flow of construction traffic, we see a town that is coming through the process relatively unscathed.
Telford did not become as large as had been proposed in 1968 so much of the historic heart of Madeley survives. We can speculate that the unidentified filmmaker was expecting much of the scenes captured to be consigned to history. Admittedly some of the pubs are no longer there but film of any town from 1967 will tell the same story. The historic Anstice Memorial Hall typifies the continuing life of the town - this former workingmen's club may have gone into liquidation in 2014 but it has since been reborn as a community centre owned by Madeley Town Council. (Please note that this title contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.)
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