The Development of the Severn Valley in the Neighbourhood of Iron-Bridge and Bridgnorth

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Abstract
The late Prof. Charles Lapworth inspired me with a desire to test the validity of his hypothesis, put forward as long ago as 1898, that the Upper Severn was added to the Lower Severn as a result of the impounding of a glacial lake in Shropshire and Cheshire. The lake, according to the hypothesis, rose until it flowed out over the former watershed between the Shropshire plain (which originally had drained to the Dee or the Mersey) and the headwaters of a tributary of the Worcestershire Stour. The same view was put forward independently by F. W. Harmer in 1907, in a paper accompanied by an excellent contoured map, which may be conveniently consulted in connexion with the present work. Neither Lapworth nor Harmer attempted, so far as I know, to bring forward detailed evidence in support of the hypothesis. Lapworth called attention to the rejuvenation of the Severn and its tributaries, which he regarded as resulting from the diversion, into a diminutive tributary of the Stour, of the copious waters of the Upper Severn which had originally flowed into the Dee; while Harmer pointed out the existence of Glacial lake-deposits on the Shropshire Plain. Harmer threw out the suggestion ( op. cit. p. 479) that the Severn Valley from Bridgnorth to Bewdley was initiated as a marginal drainage-channel on the west side of the ice-lobe that left so many Scottish and Lake-District boulders around Wolverhampton and Bridgnorth. As may be seen from any contoured map, the Cheshire-North Shropshire Plain is
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