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Tan Bank - Foundry Road
Wellington's Lost Medieval Street
The area now occupied by the approach road to Wellington Leisure Centre and its adjoining car parks was, until the 1970s, the site of Foundry Road. This thoroughfare, which ran from Tan Bank to the junction of Union Road, originally formed part of the town's medieval grid plan, when it was known as Newhall Street. After the Lord of the Manor, Giles de Erdington, received a market charter for Wellington in 1244, he extended Church Street towards the current Market Square and may have built a new house in the area that gave the road its name. It is not clear exactly when or why Newhall Street became known as Foundry Road, but it has been suggested that the establishment of a bell foundry by the Clibury family, during the late Sixteenth Century, was responsible for the name change. They supplied bells to over 70 Shropshire churches, the earliest known examples of which date from 1590 in Condover Parish.