Enthusiasts seek wider recognition for railway builder Thomas Brassey
ENTHUSIASTS have formed a society to promote recognition of Cheshire-born Thomas Brassey, a Victorian civil engineering entrepreneur who by the mid-19th century had built a third of Britain’s railways and by 1870 one in 20 miles of the world’s railways spread over five continents.
Born in 1805, the eldest son of a wealthy farmer in Buerton, a village 12 miles south of what was to become the railway hub of Crewe, he left the prestigious King’s School in Chester at 16 to become an articled apprentice to William Lawton, a land surveyor and agent.
In his early career he helped to survey the new Shrewsbury to Holyhead road that is now the A5,
