The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust run ten museums along and around the Ironbridge Gorge. Each is individually priced, but you can also buy a £26.50 Annual Passport covering the lot. That's great value if you live nearby, but for a one-off visit it's important to tick off multiple locations to make optimum use. Alternatively if you have an Art Pass you can walk into all of them for free, and that's what I did.
Although the museums are quite spread out no museum is more than half an hour's walk from its neighbour, so I managed to chain together a decent walking route and visit six. All the Ironbridge collateral assumes you'll be driving, indeed the official leaflet doesn't bother with a map and simply lists ten postcodes for your satnav. On summer weekends and bank holidays a shuttle bus links all the sites together, but it's not hard to make do without.
The best map showing all the museums is here, but even this assumes you'll be driving. So I've put together a Google map of my own showing all the sites, how to walk between them and some idea of walking times. I realise now I held off visiting Ironbridge for years because I thought it'd be a pain to get around, so I'd like to reassure you today that it's definitely doable.
A first cluster of museums can be found at the top of Coalbrookdale, which is a short feeder valley running down to the top of the gorge. It was here in 1709 that Abraham Darby first successfully smelted iron ore using coke rather than charcoal, and what's amazing is that his furnace is still on view. Admittedly Abraham's grandson Abraham enlarged it considerably, so all that's left of the original is a small area of foundation walls, but the 1777 version helped forge the Iron Bridge so is iconic enough. These days it's housed inside a triangular structure for protection, but anyone can go inside and walk around and even climb up to the top and peer down the enormous mouth of the blast furnace. I found it wonderfully historically overwhelming.
Outside are numerous hangovers from when this was the CoalbrookdaleIron Works, including an old railway viaduct swinging round the rear of the furnace, and behind that a dammed pool once used for power. The last iron foundry in the valley closed as recently as 2017 and is where Agas were made. Its sprawling cluster of sheds are now slowly decaying behind a locked gate.
The actual Museum of Iron is housed in a former administrative building and is spread across three floors. It's the most educational of the ten museums, dipping into geology, industrial history and a fair bit of human geography. A few years ago it was given a major spruce-up and is all the better for it, with clear informative panels and engaging content (although the talking cauldron could give it a rest occasionally, thanks). Much is made of the economic wonders that rippled out from this very spot, and how the local iron industry adapted to changing tastes and needs over the years. I wondered whether climate change would get a mention and finally spotted three paragraphs right at the very end before the gift shop, the closest to an admission of guilt being that atmospheric impacts were "not anticipated in the nineteenth century". Blame Darby, but by golly also praise him.
Also up here in Coalbrookdale: Enginuity This is the hands-on one where children run around, push and turn things and (if they're lucky) learn about physics. I skipped it because I'm too old for an Archimedes Screw. Darby Houses This is the historic dwelling one and reflects entrepreneurial homelife. I skipped it because it didn't open until noon.
→ 15 minute walk down the valley to the banks of the Severn →
This is the smallest of the ten museums, housed in a riverside Victorian warehouse built in Gothic Revival style. Its purpose is to tell the story of the gorge itself, from how the landscape feature came to be created to how various industries chose to exploit it. The highlight is a 12m-long diorama portraying the gorge as it would have been in the late 18th century, with smoky chimneys amid the wooded slopes and boats transporting goods beneath the new-fangled Iron Bridge. The central cinema shows a looping overview video, and on its wall is an unnervingly high line marking the height of the 1795 flood. But you won't be spending long here.
→ 5 minute walk along the gorge beside the river →
The gorge didn't just support ironworks, it branched out during the 19th century into decorative tiling. Victorians did love an unnecessarily ornate ceramic, and Craven Dunnill & Co met their needs here in this very long brick building. They specialised in encaustic tiles, that's tiles whose patterns were formed from two or more colours of clay. Initially the museum looks like it might be quite dry, but then you head upstairs into galleries of assorted tiles in diverse styles and it's all quite wonderful. Some tiles look gorgeous in themselves, while others only spring to life when patterned together.
An ingenious central section depicts all sorts of uses to which Jackfield's tiles were put, so you get to walk past a terracotta pub bar, an intricate chapel, a set of splashbacks and a washroom. Most exciting for stereotypical readers of this blog they've recreated Covent Gardenstation's platform because its tiles were originally made here in Jackfield. A mirror halfway down completes the illusion. The company still operates from workshops downstairs - they did the tiles for the most recent upgrade of Regent's Park station - and has a little outlet shop where you can buy delightful (and delightfully cheap) keepsakes to take home.
At the far end of the building is the John Scott Gallery, the lifetime's collection of a man from Birkenhead with an eye for the aesthetic. He wanted to share his 1700+ tiles with the public so in 2014 Jackfield built an extension, and blimey there are treasures on every wall. Here are Pugins, Morrises and de Morgans, but also four examples retrieved from postwar WHSmiths promoting Guide Books, Sea Tales, Engineering Books and Ladies' Papers. Of John Piper's stylistic Four Seasons the information panel merely states "there is some debate as to which tile represents which season". It proved an excellent finale to my favourite of the ten museums.
→ 15 minute walk downstream and across a footbridge (between two pubs) →
Every Ironbridge museum tries to find another angle to present the history of the gorge, and Coalport gets to concentrate on china. That's because Coalport China was made here, initially in 1795, and numerous examples of the company's finest work can be found within. This means cabinets full of cups and saucers, and displays showcasing those difficult pink and blue dyes, and rather more porcelain than most people would normally want to scrutinise. If your children don't enjoy the first part they'll hopefully enjoy the workshop where they can sit down and decorate their own plate. Elsewhere professional craftspeople are at work in their own studios, plus you get to walk inside a couple of bottle kilns which are where everything would have been fired. Coalport lingers on as a brand name under the Wedgwood umbrella, but here is where it all began.
Also down here in Coalport: Tar Tunnel This is a tunnel workers stopped digging when they came across oozing deposits of tar. I skipped this one because it's only open on Wednesday afternoons in the summer. Hay Inclined PlaneThis one amazed me. The owners of the Shropshire Canal needed a way of getting goods from Coalport Wharf to a waterway 60m higher up, so laid two parallel tracks down the hillside and used the weight of a full barge going down to help raise an empty barge going up. This extraordinary operation ran for a hundred years, starting in 1793, although today all that remains are the two tracks linking two disjoint disused canals. You can see the bottom of the incline from the main road, you can cross the centre along a public footpath and you can stand at the top within the grounds of our next museum.
→ 25 minute walk uphill via Silkin Way (do not attempt to follow the main road) →
This is Ironbridge's big-hitter, a full-on historical recreation depicting West Midlands life in the year 1900. It's a bit like Beamish or the Black Country Living Museum in that staff dress up and act the part, so you might stop for a chat with the undertaker or swap pleasantries with the postmistress, indeed you won't get much out of the place if you don't. The site is enormous, encompassing a former brickworks and foundry, although a lot of the area at the far end is just woodland. All sorts of oddities have been shoehorned in, including an inclined lift (closed on my visit), a mine railway (closed on my visit) and a dripping-fried fish and chip shop. Many of the shops have vintage goods on the upper shelves but stuff you can actually buy on the lower ones, which seemed a bit cheeky.
The town definitely looks the part, indeed the big reveal as you step out of the opening cinema presentation is undeniably impressive. It was convincingly 19th century enough that Doctor Who filmed a not-especially-loved serial here at Blists Hill in the 1980s, and I recognised a few of the locations where Kate O'Mara placed Colin Baker in mortal danger. But I still wandered round quicker than I'd been expecting, perhaps because the Victorian era isn't as much of a revelation to me as it is to a ten year-old, or perhaps because a few of the characters looked like they were already winding down for the day. I would not have got my £18.50's worth, if only I'd paid that for it.
And the one I didn't go anywhere near: Broseley Pipeworks This is a former clay tobacco pipe factory, abandoned in the 1950s. I skipped this one because it's off the beaten track, and I probably wouldn't have arrived at the right time for the obligatory guided tour anyway.
Ironbridge spans the river Severn downstream of Shrewsbury and upstream of Bridgnorth. More precisely it's five miles south of Telford, within whose boundaries this premier industrial area now stands. Buses from Telford to the nearest town of Madeley are frequent but, unless you're willing to walk the last stretch, those to Ironbridge proper are rarer.
A short stretch of the Severn Valley in Shropshire lays claim as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Geology bequeathed it all the right raw materials for successful manufacturing - coal, iron ore, limestone and clay. The Ice Age gifted the river a deep gorge carved by glacial meltwater. And when Abraham Darby discovered a process for making pig iron from coke rather than charcoal, the whole place ignited. In reality the Industrial Revolution was a broader church of numerous innovations over a far broader area across a much longer timespan, but Ironbridge is the World Heritage Site and rightly lauded. [15 photos]
The valley had been choking with activity for decades before the iron bridge was built, with steam rising from belching furnaces along its length. But getting goods and raw materials across the river was difficult, the Severn being an unpredictable beast, so in the 1770s a new bridge was proposed at the heart of the gorge. Unsurprisingly local industrialists wanted to show off the building material of which they were most proud, despite nobody ever having constructed a cast iron bridge before. Abraham Darby III therefore ended up using a design more suitable to carpentry, bending several individual ribs of metal across the water, then topped it all off with a sloping roadway. Opening day was 1st January 1781, although the Roman numerals on the side of the bridge cite MDCCLXXIX, the year construction began.
That the Iron Bridge still stands is tribute to its construction, although numerous urgent repairs have been required over the years and road traffic had to be banned in 1934. It remains a magnificent structure, aided and abetted by its mid-gorge setting. Until fairly recently it was grey, but research confirmed it was originally red so English Heritage had the entire structure repainted.
So impressed was Georgian society by this engineering marvel that the bridge became a tourist attraction in its own right. A hotel was constructed directly opposite the northern end, despite this being the one place from which the arches are invisible, and a small town grew up along the slopes of the gorge. That town too is still there, long after industrial activity transferred to larger mechanised facilities elsewhere, and remains the hub of the local area's tourist trade. Savvy businesses have worked out there's only so much staring at a bridge visitors can undertake, so have arrayed a chain of cafes, emporia, cupcakeries, bookshops and teddy bear outlets on the river-facingroad. Rest assured it's quite tastefully done.
Steps lead down from the promenade to a footpath along the side of the Severn (or there's a gentler ramp from the western side if you prefer). The path actually passes through the struts at the bottom of the bridge at the point where they abut the abutment, which is a great opportunity to get right up close to the structure. Optimum spots for the taking of photographs are available but in short supply, so you may need to wait your turn. Try not to get in anyone else's shots while doing so. The river was fast-flowing on my visit, but occasionally rises considerably higher after particularly heavy rain. Several signs around Ironbridge show the height of the floods in 1795, on which occasion Darby's new span was the only bridge anywhere down the Severn not to be washed away.
The bridge is free to access, sealed off only by a row of bollards. The footway rises to a central point, then drops back down, a bit like if Tower Bridge jammed a few degrees from fully closing. Other than one floral flourish in the centre the railings aren't overly decorative. It's easy to forget just how high up you are, even as you stare out along thegorge in both directions, its wooded sides currently bedecked in autumn colours. From the Ironbridge end of the Iron Bridge you might also catch sight of the cooling towers of the local power station, or at least you might this month because they're scheduled to be demolished in November.
And on the southern side is the Toll House, from the days when horse-drawn coaches were charged up to two shillings per crossing and every individual pig a ha'penny. Today it's open as a Tourist Information Office and a museum, which is somewhat optimistic for a small two-storey building so there isn't much substance to either. It's also the only one of the ten museums under the Ironbridge Gorge Trust umbrella without an admission charge, so acts as a gateway drug to encourage tourists to visit the others. Only one other museum is within short walking distance, which might not be £26.50 well spent, but I managed to visit the majority of them (and I'll tell you about those tomorrow).
05:12 I have woken up three minutes before my alarm, because bodies are strange like that. 05:50 I am wearing my winter coat for the first time this autumn. The stars are out. 05:59 Bow Road station is very quiet. The timetabled tube train does not arrive. 06:35 Someone is sitting in my reserved seat stuffing a croissant into their mouth. They pick up their bag of crumbs and move into the aisle seat, then spend 15 minutes brushing their face. 07:26 One of the best things about an early morning window seat is watching a smear of dawn burning pink and gold through a gap in the clouds. 07:30 I wish I hadn't forgotten my headphones. 08:03 The three civil servants at the table opposite have been talking about work for over an hour, including what the new SpAds are like, how positive the Secretary of State was at her last meeting and why it's important today's key speaker has more than one slide in their presentation. One has spent the trip sticking together little red cardboard boxes for use at today's two sessions. The trio have been impressively diplomatic in revealing nothing of national importance, but I am now party to a considerable amount of departmental gossip. 08:49 Train two is late and standing room only, so I'm stuck in the vestibule where I can barely see out of the window, but that's OK because it's quite foggy. 09:11 This town seems to be mostly shopping centre. A screen in Thomas Cook's window is still playing adverts for holidays nobody will ever take. 09:28 "No, you get on first, our free bus passes aren't valid until half past." 09:43 My bus is being diverted because of roadworks ahead, so I have to get off to catch a free shuttlebus, but that left two minutes ago because we were delayed by earlier roadworks. 10:11 I have spent the last half hour at a bus stop outside a row of public conveniences, opposite a fancy goods shop that can't spell "stationery".
10:20 I've wanted to come here for ages. I have technically been here before, but I didn't get off the bus. 10:27 Sitting alone in the theatre, waiting for the film loop to restart. 11:00 A clock strikes and the museum opens. Before I go inside I want to go and stand on the iconic structure at the end of the lawn. The cafe smells of bacon. 11:23 It may be half term in London but it isn't around here, because I timed my trip carefully. 11:54 The fog's finally lifted. 12:02 I am underneath the thing I have mainly come to see. Several retired people with big zoom lenses are here too. We all patiently wait to take our turns in the optimal snapping locations. 12:06 I am on top of the thing I have mainly come to see. It's mostly empty, so my lone silhouette must be really annoying the photographers down below. 12:20 Well that was lovely. Now, onwards along the disused railway. 12:42 The local brass band rehearses for two hours every Tuesday and Friday evening in the former Wesleyan Chapel. 13:19 John's collection is absolutely fabulous. I particularly like the Pipers and the WHSmith quartet. 13:48 I hoped I'd arrived too early for the workshop tour, because I simply don't have the time, but the bow-tied volunteer is just back from lunch (where he had a jacket potato with tuna) and proceeds to run me through the finer points of manufacture anyway. 14:13 Wow. I don't know if I'm more impressed that they built that or that it's still here. 14:21 Should have followed the sign. Should not have tried to walk up the hill along the road. For the first time today I am regretting the winter coat. 14:39 That is quite the big reveal (and all the better for not being full of schoolkids). 14:54 The Wow is even more impressive from the top of the incline than from the bottom. A retired couple on the way up are muttering about the steps being 'quite uneven'. 15:22 I recognise that mineshaft from Doctor Who. 15:28 The undertaker is mending a violin. The postmistress is explaining Morse Code. The pharmacist seems glad of some company. I'm already thinking about leaving, whereas I had been expecting to stay another hour. 15:55 I doubt that anybody else is leaving on foot.
16:08 Oh great, I'm back at the bus stop by the misspelled 'stationary' sign, which has no timetable. While I wait, a local resident spots a cigarette butt on the pavement, picks it up and lights it. 16:33 My meandering bus is affording me a lengthy tour of provincial suburban estates, which I'm choosing to see as a fascinating insight into Middle English society rather than a prolonged waste of time. 16:51 The two teenage passengers with the matching dyed blue hair are off to Subway to kickstart their evening on the town. 17:11 The screen in Thomas Cook's window has been turned off, and a handwritten welcome message from Hays Travel stuck up instead. 17:35 My first homeward train has plenty of seats. Time to finish off my thermos of tea. 17:54 I have almost an hour before my next train departs, which is the downside of a sub-£10 Advance ticket. This does at least leave time to walk the city streets at dusk, which is briefly pretty, but then it gets dark and all the shops are closed and I've already walked ten miles today and in truth I just want to go home. 18:16 The police have removed their knife arch from the station entrance. 18:34 It's started raining, so I'm glad the train is early. 19:07 I cannot for the life of me get 1 across in today's quick crossword. 19:45 The heating's turned up so high in this carriage that my fledgling cold suddenly evolves into full-on nose-dribbling mode. The lady in the seat opposite is similarly triggered and ends up blowing noisily into her handkerchief for an entire minute. She cannot see the Daily Mail reader sat behind her repeatedly raising her eyeballs to the ceiling, but I can. 20:39 Oh the joy of walking out onto an unheated platform. 20:40 Nobody has checked my ticket at any point on the rail journey south. 21:25 Home. Phew. Fabulous.
