Turn back the clock and Donnington was a small village on a quiet road in a semi-rural setting.

But look more closely at our old postcard image of the junction at Wellington Road and you'll see that there was more to Donnington than that, as behind the quaint cottages looms the huge Midland Iron Works, which for well over 100 years was a major local employer.

Today there is an enduring reminder of this disappeared part of Shropshire's industrial heritage - the firm's landmark clock tower which is now a feature on a Telford roundabout.

The postcard comes from the collection of Bridgnorth's Ray Farlow and is undated, but will be from the early part of the 20th century.

Our modern comparison shot of the same scene today shows that while the cottages survive, the old works ­- C & W Walker Ltd - has long gone, with the site now covered by a housing estate.

Things that you can't see in the old postcard view are the Methodist Church off to the right - it is today a Serbian Orthodox Church - and, roughly behind the photographer, a railway line serving local pits, a level crossing, a public weighbridge, and a coal wharf.

So old Donnington was in fact in an industrialised environment, but the biggest change of all came with the arrival of COD Donnington just before the Second World War, which was accompanied by a big programme to build houses for the workers, turning the village into a small town.

Walker's came to Donnington from London in 1857, and for more about the history of the firm we can turn to the memories of Eric Jones, who arrived in Donnington as a 10-year-old in 1936.

"They manufactured gas holders and purifiers to be sold worldwide. The firm also made and distributed gas to the local area, through The Lilleshall Gas Company, until 1947," Eric recalled.  

"Charles Walker in particular was a local benefactor. He bought The Old Hall at Lilleshall which is now part of The Old Ben’s Homes complex. He founded the Walker Technical College at Oakengates, provided a reading room at Donnington and donated more than 100 books. He also erected a large canteen and social building on the west side of Station Road.

"After the death of Charles and William, C & W Walker became a limited company employing in 1899 over 700 people.

"When Charles Walker & Co moved to Donnington, the company occupied a forge that belonged to the Duke of Sutherland.  As a condition of the company’s lease, it was stipulated that all new buildings should be erected in corrugated iron, the reason being that, if the fortunes of the business should go awry, the premises would be easy to convert to private dwellings, which eventually did happen."

It should perhaps be interposed here that today's modern homes built on the site are definitely not made of corrugated iron!

Eric continued: "Consequently, the firm’s premises had an extremely distinctive appearance that was made all the more striking by the presence of a cast-iron clock, which was erected on a timber sub-frame in 1879. 

"This local landmark, which housed a bell, and, later, a siren, that informed the workers when their shifts were about to begin or end, now stands on the Donnington  roundabout of the A518, which itself occupies the site of the former railway station, closed to passengers in 1964."

Like most of British manufacturing industry, the firm was severely hit in the 1980s. In September 1987 the Star reported that Walker Engineering Ltd, as it was then, was to cease manufacturing in January 1988.

By the summer of 1989 the works was in a skeletal condition and clearance of the site must have come soon afterwards.