Fears of lead poisoning killed off the idea of a new Snailbeach

All you Snailbeach fans out there are in for a treat. Remember 1946 and the plan for this former lead-mining village to be moved to a new site?

I know why it didn't take place. 

So do you because of the headline, but let's start with a letter in the Shrewsbury Chronicle (18 January 1946) from F.H. Edwards of Snailbeach:

Housing at Snailbeach 

I would like to congratulate Mr. William Humphrey for the way he is putting the most serious housing problem to the Clun R.D.C. No wonder the chairman, Mr. J. Norton, wants a move in this housing business. I personally have been in contact with Government officials regarding housing water and electricity. I have explained how we are in need of at least 60 houses in the Heath Ward for Service men and girls alone, and another 20 for couples who are not in the Forces but have got married during the last six years. ...

I can well imagine the Minister of Town and Country Planning having a good laugh when learning there was no electricity and water in the Snailbeach district, and we applied for industry to be brought here. Probably we shall have to wait until March before being able to get a move on, when we may see fresh faces on the council.

So it sounds like there was a plan, not just to move Snailbeach, but to expand it because of the the local housing shortage and lack of amenities.

Wondering exactly where the Heath Ward of Clun Rural District was, I googled it, though without much expectation of success.

But I can tell you that it covered the villages of Snailbeach, The Bog, Stiperstones, Pennerley and Tankerville. (The Bog was largely razed in the early Sixties, and you wouldn't call Tankerville a village today.)

I got this information from the preamble of a thesis submitted to the University of Edinburgh in 1951 by a George Kenneth McKenzie:

The investigations recorded in this thesis were initiated as a result of a report sent to the surveyor of the Clun Rural District Council, Shropshire, by Professor W.G. Fearnsides, MA, FRS, FGS, MIME, senior geological consultant to the National Coal Board.

Professor Fearnsides had been asked to investigate the suitability of a site in the Snailbeach District for the erection of a new housing estate. In his report he had stated that in his opinion the site was unsuitable, because the tenants would be exposed to lead poisoning from the slag heaps deposited by the old mines in the area; and that the anaemia which past doctors in the area had believed to be present, was in all probability due to lead intoxication.

If I'm reading the thesis correctly, McKenzie found from his testing of people of the district that there was a high incidence of anaemia, but no reason to think that it was caused by lead poisoning. 

It sounds, though, as if this finding came too late to save the dream of New Snailbeach.