New Town New Ways? (Telford in general)

Member Name: tuftyclub

Product:	Telford in general
Date:	29/07/01 (74 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheap housing, coutryside is near

Disadvantages: not a lot to do

Telford is a New Town in Shropshire. It's a bit of a strange place in that unlike most other new towns which are closely built, Telford is very spread out and stretches for miles. It basically comprises of some old villages tied together by motorways, and lots of new housing estates added in-between. So it has a variety of housing types and tenures.

Housing in Telford is much cheaper that elsewhere- for example the same New Build estate house would cost around 30,000 less than in nearby Shrewsbury- perhaps the land is cheaper, I'm not sure exactly why but there is a big difference. You could buy a 3 bedroomed house for 40K, if you weren't too fussy where you lived. It is also very much a 'house society', flats are less available and, generally tend to be in the poorer areas. There is a great variety of areas- from council estates to very large detached
houses.

The main centre is a purpose built shopping centre. There are various amenities around this,a cinema, an ice rink, bingo hall, and a very large Town Park. The park is landscaped, so not exactly anatural woodland, but there is a substational amount of it about - andthe further back you get the more attractive it is. The centre is soulless, but if you want to merely shop in big name stores and have easy parking it is fine. Not an exiting place though. If you were looking for an unusual present you would be unlikely to get it there- although the have an occasional craft fair which offers 'different' and more
'unusual' things, although not always different in an attractive way.

It's very much a drivers town, the car is king and 99% of people drive from 17 on. but it is not easy to get around by public transport- between 'townships' pavements are rare and it's basically a 'take a
risk walking along the dual carriageway' situation. There are cycle routes, but you have to know where they are always feel the la
ck of decent public transport is a pity, people have little choice but to drive-
not many buses at night - and many places would be cut off on a Sunday. For example if you wanted to go to the cinema one evening, you would take the bus to the bus station, walk across busy roads ( roads with no
pedestrian crossings) or go through deserted underpasses to get to the cinema. If you have a car fine, if not less fine.

There are some pubs and clubs in the older areas so you can go out- but nothing really 'happening'.The theatre at Oakengates is large and has some reasonably 'big' acts.

There's a fair amount of industry and a fair amount of decent jobs, but not all. There's a lot of people that look pretty badly off - and loads of temp agencies where low paid factory jobs abound.

I am trying to be fair, but I really don't like the place, although I realise that it all goes on what you like/value in life. If you want a big house and aren't really into doing much at night and are happy to drive everywhere Telford will meet your needs, if you prefer pavements to walk on you probably won't be happy there.

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