Shrewsbury - Geography

Geography

See also: Geography of Shropshire

Shrewsbury is located about 14 miles (23 km) to the west of Telford, 43 miles (69 km) west of Birmingham and the West Midlands Conurbation, and about 150 miles (240 km) north-west of the capital, London. More locally, the town is to the east of Welshpool, and Bridgnorth and Kidderminster are to the south-east. The border with Wales is 9 miles (14 km) to the west. The town centre is partially built on a hill whose elevation is, at its highest, 75 metres above sea level. The longest river in the UK, the River Severn, flows through the town, forming a meander around its centre.

**Areas of Shrewsbury**
Atcham Bayston Hill Hanwood Bicton R. Severn Upton Magna A5 (TELFORD) -> Uffington Abbey Foregate TC Underdale Belvidere Monkmoor Belle Vue Meole Brace Sutton Farm Emstrey Kingsland Porthill Frankwell Shelton Bicton Heath Copthorne Radbrook Nobold Castlefields Bagley Ditherington Harlescott Sundorne Battlefield A clickable link map of Shrewsbury* showing suburbs and surrounding villages.*

From the late 1990s the town has experienced severe flooding problems from the Severn and Rea Brook. In the autumn of 2000 large swathes of the town were underwater, notably Frankwell which was flooded three times in the space of six weeks. The Frankwell flood defences were completed in 2003, along with the new offices of the borough council. More recently, such as in 2005 and 2007, flooding has been less severe, and the defences have generally held back floodwaters from the town centre areas. However, the town car parks are often left to be flooded in the winter, which reduces trade in the town, most evidenced in the run up to Christmas in 2007.

The town is situated near Haughmond Hill, a site where Precambrian rocks, some of the oldest rocks in the county can be found, and the town itself is sited on an area of largely Carboniferous rocks. A fault, the Hodnet Fault, starts approximately at the town, and runs as far as Market Drayton.

Famous quotes containing the word geography:

“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

“Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)