ABSTRACT
Before the dissolution of the monasteries, settlement on the slopes of the Gorge was confined to a number of farms in woodland clearances, an occasional mill, perhaps a small community in Coalbrookdale. There are isolated references to the exploitation of minerals in the Gorge since at least the fourteenth century, and there are references to mining and iron manufacture that date back even earlier than this (see chapter 2), but nothing to suggest that this was on any scale, or that it generated any permanent new settlement. The principal focus of settlement remained the nuclei of Benthall, Broseley and Madeley. Settlement in the Gorge itself was minimal, and has left littletrace.3
