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Thomas Telford Anniversary

I am pleased to have secured the opportunity to mark in the House the 250th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Telford. I see this Adjournment debate as a contribution to the celebration of the life and legacy of an outstanding man, not just of his time but as one whose work has shaped his profession to this day and many of whose engineering feats are still in use centuries later. There is absolutely no doubt that Scotland would not be the place it is today without Thomas Telford. His work literally opened up the highlands with more than 900 miles of new roads, hundreds of bridges, ferry landing piers and dozens of churches. Indeed, the work enabled the transportation of goods and people across the whole of Scotland, facilitating many aspects of the industrial revolution. Today, we take it for granted that motorways, bridges and canals exist. We do not stop to consider that planning these transport networks and many aspects of the methodology of construction were visualised hundreds of years before. Telford’s Glasgow-to-Carlisle road, of which many parts remain, runs through my constituency and was the equivalent of the modern M74 motorway which is only now being completed between Gretna and Carlisle. Although this debate is taking place hundreds of miles from Telford’s birthplace at Glendinning at Westerkirk in the Dumfriesshire part of my constituency, it is taking place only a few hundred yards from his final resting place in Westminster Abbey—a mark of the esteem in which he is held and an honour bestowed on only one other civil engineer: Robert Stephenson, who pioneered the railways. Telford stamped his presence on civil engineering and is more than worth the set of stamps that the Royal Mail is producing this year. His legacy to his profession was in the standards he set for a reliable system of estimates, contracts, specifications and tenders, which are as relevant today as they were in the 1800s. In our time, when social mobility is the subject of much debate, Thomas Telford’s achievement was that he rose from being the son of a shepherd on a remote Dumfriesshire hillside to being the most lauded and esteemed civil engineer in the empire. His poet friend Robert Southey termed him the ““Colossus of Roads””. That is just one reason why I would like to see the Government in Westminster and the Scottish Government in Edinburgh do more to promote recognition of the achievements of Telford and people of his ilk, who did so much to shape the modern world in the final centuries of the last millennium. Ahead of the debate, I had the opportunity to speak to Scotland’s new Culture Minister, Linda Fabiani MSP, and was encouraged by her acceptance that Scotland could do better in promoting the life and legacy of such people as Telford, who leave a permanent footprint on our way of life and remain a lasting influence over Scotland, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. I want to make the same plea to the Minister on a United Kingdom basis because, with his works in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland, Telford was truly a great Briton. To understand the motivations of such a man, we need to accept and appreciate where he came from. Telford was born on 9 August 1757. His father was a herdsman on the sheep farm of Glendinning at Westerkirk. It was and remains a remote and isolated area. It is farmed today by Lorraine Luesher, who works hard to keep the tradition of hill farming alive in Eskdale and who has produced a booklet on the Telford legacy. His father died weeks after his birth and so his mother Janet brought up Thomas. The close-knit local community supported the boy, who was known as ““laughing Tam”” for his good nature. As a youngster, he attended Westerkirk school and much of his early life was spent working as a shepherd on neighbouring farms, and with his widowed mother. After leaving school, Telford looked for work that offered decent prospects. His family were able to get him placed as an apprentice mason. His first master treated him very cruelly and Telford ran away, but his cousin Thomas Jackson found him work with Andrew Thomson, a Langholm mason. The Duke of Buccleuch was improving his estate at that time and Telford was kept busy, becoming a journeyman mason earning 18d a day. As he himself said,"““I ever congratulate myself upon the circumstances which compelled me to begin by working with my own hands, and thus to acquire early experience of the habits and feelings of workmen””." During this time, Telford met Miss Pasley, whose books he was able to borrow. He became a voracious reader. He described his studies in the following way:"““I read, and read, and glowred; then read and read again.””" At the age of 23, Telford considered himself to be the master of his art and went to Edinburgh. Although he lived much of his adult life away from his place of birth, he always thought fondly of it, writing in his autobiography:"““I still recollect with pride and pleasure my native parish of Westerkirk.””" In Edinburgh, he studied drawing and its application to architecture. In 1782, Telford travelled south to find work in London, writing that he"““judged it advisable (like many of my countrymen) to proceed southward, where industry might find more employment, and be better rewarded.””" He was lucky to obtain work at Somerset House, an enormous construction project at the time. He served as Shropshire’s first surveyor of public works in 1787, and so began a career that included the building of roads, bridges, churches, harbours and canals, many of which are still in use today.