Telford, Thomas

1757-1834

Thomas Telford was born in Jamestown, in the parish of Westerkirk in Eskdale, Dumfries-shire on 9 August 1757. He was the posthumous son of a shepherd and was, reputedly, brought up in poverty. He left school at the age of 14 to become an apprentice stonemason. He was, for a time, a journeyman mason, working, among other projects, on the Langholm Bridge.
He moved to Edinburgh in 1780, at the age of 23, and two years later moved to London to work on Somerset House. In 1787 he was appointed surveyor of public works in Shropshire and the engineer of the Ellesmere Canal.
He returned to Scotland in 1790 to survey harbours and piers on behalf of the British Fisheries Society, and the results of these surveys, along with later schemes to improve harbours, survive in the form of reports among the records of burghs and public bodies held by many Scottish archives.
His most famous achievements include the construction of the Caledonian Canal, the building of almost 1000 miles of road and 120 bridges in the Highlands, the Gotha Canal (linking the Baltic with the North Sea), the Menai Bridge (linking the island of Anglesey with the Welsh mainland), and improvements to the Glasgow to Carlisle Road.

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