Brookside, Telford

Brookside is a housing estate and borough and parish council ward in Telford, Shropshire, England. The original settlement of Brookside is a Radburn estate built in the early 1970s as part of the development of Telford New Town and is entirely within the confines of Brookside Avenue, a 1.7 mile ring road. Significant development has taken place around the outside of Brookside Avenue since the estate was built, the majority of which is part of Stirchley Park but falls within the Brookside ward for both Telford and Wrekin Council and Stirchley and Brookside Parish Council.HistoryThere is little recorded history of Brookside given its relative unimportance compared to neighbouring Stirchley with its ancient manor and historic church. The Brookside area was farm land prior to development of the Brookside estate. In the 1970s a housing estate was built on the farm land which was named Brookside, a reference to it being situated alongside the Mad Brook (more accurately, Made Brook which gives the nearby town of Madeley its name).A deserted mediæval settlement named Oulmeyre was recorded in the 13th century near Holmer Lake which was part of the Brookside parish council ward until boundary changes in 2015 created a new Holmer Lake ward.RegenerationFollowing decades of underinvestment in maintaining the fabric of the estate, a regeneration programme was started for the Brookside Local Centre which by June 2014 had seen the local shops relocated to a new building and work started on the renovation and expansion of the community centre. Running alongside the physical regeneration is a lottery-funded, resident-led social regeneration programme called Brookside Big Local.