SHROPSHIRE AND STAFFORDSHIRE - Geography and history
Shropshire is the least densely populated county in the West Midlands, with 90 inhabitants per km2. Staffordshire is over three times as densely populated with over 800 thousand people living in an area of 2 600 km2. The counties lie to the west and north of the West Midlands conurbation and to the east of Wales.
Shropshire's western border with Wales is hilly, rising in places to over 500 m, but to the east of the river Severn the land is lower-lying, and flatter. The north of Staffordshire includes a section of the Derbyshire Peak District National Park while in the south is the afforested Cannock Chase.
Stoke-on-Trent in the north of Staffordshire is the centre of the conurbation known as the 'Potteries'. Other major towns are Stafford and Cannock in the south of Staffordshire and Burton upon Trent in the east. The largest towns in Shropshire are Shrewsbury and the new town of Telford.
The M6 motorway from Birmingham to Manchester traverses Staffordshire from north to south and passes close by Stoke-on-Trent. Telford is connected to Birmingham and the M6 by the M54 motorway. The express railway link from London to Glasgow passes through Staffordshire and electric main inter-city rail services also run to Birmingham and Manchester.
The first industrial area in Britain
From the early eighteenth century, Shropshire, stimulated by its reserves of coal and iron ore, developed as the first industrial area in Britain. However this development did not continue, and the county is now comparatively rural compared to others in the West Midlands. In 2001, of all the counties in the West Midlands region, Shropshire had the highest proportion (at 10 per cent) of the workforce employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing. Staffordshire also experienced industrial growth from this time with manufacturers of ceramics such as the world-renowned firm of Josiah Wedgewood establishing this industry in the north of the county. The area, known as 'the Potteries', is still the centre of the ceramics industry in Britain although employment has contracted in recent years. Other manufacturing, particularly electrical engineering, has increased and, overall, manufacturing accounts for over a fifth of employees in Staffordshire.
Another area of growth, particularly in Staffordshire, is in the transport and distribution industries where the counties' location between the population centres of Manchester and Merseyside to the north and Birmingham to the south has been a major factor.
Average earnings in Staffordshire and Shropshire in 2002 were, respectively, about £50 and £70 lower per week than for the United Kingdom as a whole, but only about £16 and £35 below the average for the West Midlands. However, the unemployment rates were considerably lower than either the regional or national rates. In 2001/02, the rate for Staffordshire was 3.0 per cent and for Shropshire 3.3 per cent.
Rural areas attract population
The total population of the sub-region was 1.5 million inhabitants in 2002.
Both Shropshire and Staffordshire have experienced population growth since the early 1980s, but following the pattern throughout the United Kingdom, this was much stronger in the more rural county of Shropshire, growing by 12 per cent between 1982 and 2002. The individual district in the sub-region with the fastest growing population during this period was Telford and Wrekin, whose population increased by over 25 per cent. The population of the industrial town of Stoke-on-Trent decreased by 5 per cent during this period. Agriculture accounts for over 5 per cent of employment in three of Shropshire's 5 districts: south Shropshire, north Shropshire and Bridgnorth. Manufacturing is important to the economies of the sub-region and in 2001, accounted for over a quarter of all employment in the districts of Telford & Wrekin and Stoke-on-Trent.
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