Jackfield Landslip

The Jackfield Landslide of 1952 – A Village on the Move

Jackfield, a riverside community near Ironbridge, is no stranger to the ground shifting beneath its feet.

The truth is, this part of the Severn Gorge has been unstable for centuries. Historical records going back to the 1700s describe roads near St Mary’s Church being “impassable,” with locals demanding help from authorities to keep the route open. In 1881, villagers complained bitterly about the “slip” on Salthouse Road, and temporary repairs were made by tipping rubble and refuse into the ruts. It rarely lasted long.

By the 20th century, everyone in Jackfield knew the ground moved. The village sat on a geological fault-line of sorts: steep slopes of clay, shale and marl, heavily fissured and prone to absorbing water. The Severn itself carved the gorge only a few thousand years ago during the last Ice Age, leaving raw, “young” valley sides. Add heavy rainfall and human activity, especially decades of clay mining and tile-making, and the slopes were always vulnerable.

The warning signs

The winter of 1951 was exceptionally wet. In November, a water main cracked near the riverbank cottages, a red flag that the ground was shifting. By February 1952, the village road had begun to buckle and lean towards the Severn.

The Severn Valley Railway workers were among the first to raise the alarm. Each morning they arrived to find the track distorted, pushed sideways by as much as half a foot a day. Local men, including Ted Aston of Jackfield, Alf Bowdler of Coalport, Eddie Minton of Broseley, and Reg Wall of Ironbridge, laboured daily with crowbars to “bend” the rails back into line.

Despite their efforts, the line eventually had to be realigned further up the bank, and trains slowed to a crawl on the Jackfield section.

Houses begin to fail

For villagers, the change was terrifyingly personal. Cracks crept along walls, doors jammed shut, floors lifted, drains snapped apart.

The first casualty was Pear Tree Cottage on Salthouse Road, which literally split in two. Then came Birbick’s Bank, just below the church, where houses began pulling away from one another.

Among the most poignant losses was the Post Office, run by Mrs Elsie Bradburn. She remembered:

> “First of all the floor started coming up. The bricks started coming up. There were cracks in the walls. The drains were going. My father said they would never stop it. We had to make a move.”

By April 1952, Jackfield was a ghost village. Gas mains had to be relaid above ground, water pipes burst, and the riverside road collapsed into the Severn, narrowing the channel by around 15 yards.

National headlines

The story gripped the nation. Pathe News broadcast reels of leaning houses and broken roads. Picture Post magazine ran dramatic photo spreads, describing “a village on the slide.”

On 24 April 1952, the Express & Star reported that the government would send scientific researchers to examine the disaster. Doug Willis of the BBC filed reports from the scene for the One O’Clock News.

Estimates of how many homes were lost vary: some reports speak of 16, others 19, and still others as many as 27 cottages destroyed or condemned. Roughly 17 families were evacuated and resettled in council houses on the new Wimpey estate at Broseley.

No compensation was ever paid.

Why did Jackfield slip?

At the time, many locals blamed the abandoned clay mines. Decades of tile and brickmaking had left the ground riddled with workings that, once flooded, were thought to have destabilised the slope.

Modern geologists see it differently. Professor A.W. Skempton, who investigated in the 1960s, showed that the real culprit was the natural geology: a 10º sloping mass of stiff, fissured clays, saturated by winter rain.

The slide was relatively shallow, extending only 18–25 feet below the surface, but it stretched over 500 feet upslope. In places, the land moved downhill by as much as 60 feet.

This is a classic feature of the Ironbridge Gorge, which remains one of the most landslide-prone areas in Britain. Over 20 separate slides have been documented here, including others in 1925, 1931 and 1984.

The gorge is young, its sides steep and raw, constantly being reshaped by the River Severn. Human use, mining, quarrying, road and rail building, only added to the stress.

The human cost

For those who lived through it, the memory was searing. Ron Miles, a Jackfield man serving in the Coldstream Guards at the time, came home on leave to find four houses on Birbick’s Bank split apart and his neighbours gone.

Elsie Bradburn never saw her Post Office rebuilt. Families were scattered, the old Square by the Half Moon pub left desolate.

“It was a lovely village and it’s gone,” she said years later.

Legacy

In the end, the Jackfield landslide of 1952 was both a natural disaster and a social one. It was a product of geology and weather, but also of centuries of industry and a lack of investment in prevention.

It remains a reminder that the Severn Gorge, for all its beauty, is still alive and shifting beneath us.