TV crew shines light on Shropshire swim hero Captain Webb
A Swiss TV film crew has come to Telford to shine the spotlight on Dawley's most famous son – Captain Matthew Webb, the first swimmer of the English Channel.
The TV firm is making a documentary about people swimming the English Channel and sought out Alan Heighway of St Georges and his wife Barb - who have built up a large collection of items and memorabilia relating to Captain Webb - to give some historical background.
Alan had a call out of the blue and met up with the team.
"I spent a few hours with them," he said. "They are a TV company called Media Tree based in Switzerland and got our Captain Webb collection details from Wikipedia and asked if they could film some items for a documentary about past and present Channel swimmers.
"Apparently a few people from Switzerland are planning Channel swims, including a young lady who hopes to swim it this year. The crewfilm camera man Vito Robbiana and sound engineer Adriano Scrade filmed in Dawley and we met them to give them information on Captain Webb.
"They filmed the Captain Webb monument and all the places relevant to him. The crew did not know about Captain Webb learning to swim in the River Severn at Coalbrookdale so we took them there where they filmed the river with the cooling towers in the background and then filmed down towards the Iron Bridge, which they had never heard of.
"Later they came back to St Georges and filmed us with our Captain Webb memorabilia collection; original Coalport plates and mug, match boxes including a rare silver matchbox, a silver medal and original newspaper reports with pictures from 1875 and the 'Pig on the Wall' postcard.
"I took them to the railway station to get the six o'clock train back to London."
Vito said they learned about the Heighways' Captain Webb collection after seeing a Shropshire Star article about it online.
"We are a Swiss crew preparing a documentary about swimmers who are crossing the English Channel. It's a Swiss TV co-production. We still are looking at different swimmers, and then we will focus on the one that will try to swim the Channel later this year.
"With our shooting in Dawley we wanted to give the documentary an historic side, and Mr Heighway was great for that."
Production of the show is continuing.
Dawley-born Captain Matthew Webb swam the English Channel in 1875, the first person to do so and a feat so great that it was to be 36 years before anybody else successfully swam across. He arrived at Calais from Dover in 21 hours, 45 minutes - extremely slow by modern standards, but there was no crawl in those days and he did it all breaststroke.
His exploit did much to increase the popularity of swimming in Victorian Britain. He died in a bid to swim the rapids below Niagara Falls in 1883.
But it was not until 1909 that a memorial to him was erected in Dawley, only a stone's throw away from his birthplace.
