Wiki's article on Telford gives, in its "persons of note" section, numerous non-modern-times people associated with constituent settlements of Telford before it was Telford; which seems rather like cheating to me, but I'm somewhat shamefacedly going along with it. One such is William Ball (1795 -- 1852), an iron-puddler born in Horsehay: reckoned the heaviest man in England during his lifetime -- he weighed 40 stone. He's put in the shade by a slightly earlier holder of this record, whom I've mentioned before in the game: Daniel Lambert (1770 -- 1809), born in Leicester -- who reached 52 stone-plus. Lambert was not a glutton, and had a fairly athletic lifestyle -- it would seem that he had the bad luck to have a strange metabolism.