Broseley

Broseley () is a market town in Shropshire, England, with a population of 4,929 at the 2011 Census and an estimate of 5,022 in 2019. The River Severn flows to its north and east. The first iron bridge in the world was built in 1779 across the Severn, linking Broseley with Coalbrookdale and Madeley. This contributed to the early industrial development in the Ironbridge Gorge, which is now part of a World Heritage Site.

==History== There was a settlement existing in 1086, listed as Bosle in the Domesday Book of that year, when it lay in the Hundred of Alnodestreu. That jurisdiction was dismembered in the time of King Henry I, when Broseley and Willey were reassigned to the Munslow Hundred. Finally they were transferred to the Liberty of Wenlock on its creation in the time of King Richard I. The place name appears as Burewardeslega in 1177, and in similar variants thereafter, indicating that it had anciently been Burgheard's (or Burgweard's) clearing, or grove. In Broseley's manorial history, the medieval family of de Burwardesley was considered by the historian R.W. Eyton to have been a cadet branch of the family of Fulk I FitzWarin of Whittington, Shropshire and Alveston, Gloucestershire.