Ironbridge Gorge
Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and one of the most important industrial heritage sites in the world, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where the convergence of coal, iron ore, water power and entrepreneurial genius in the narrow gorge of the River Severn in the mid-eighteenth century produced the technological and commercial breakthroughs that transformed the world. The Iron Bridge itself, built between 1777 and 1779 as the world's first large-scale cast-iron bridge structure, stands across the gorge as the defining symbol of this transformation and remains in daily use as a pedestrian crossing.
The coalmaster Abraham Darby first smelted iron using coke rather than charcoal at Coalbrookdale in 1709, a technical breakthrough that freed iron production from its dependence on timber and enabled the dramatic expansion of output that fuelled the Industrial Revolution. Within three generations the Darby family had developed their process to the point where they could cast the 378 tonnes of iron required to build the Iron Bridge, a structure that demonstrated the structural possibilities of cast iron to the world and opened the way for the bridges, railways, factories and industrial buildings of the following century.
The ten museums of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust collectively tell the story of this transformation from multiple perspectives. The Museum of Iron at Coalbrookdale, Blists Hill Victorian Town, the Coalport China Museum, the Jackfield Tile Museum and the others together provide one of the most comprehensive industrial heritage experiences in the world, each museum occupying a site where the history it describes actually took place.
The gorge itself, cut through the Shropshire hills by the Severn in the last Ice Age, provides a dramatic and beautiful setting for this industrial history, the wooded hillsides and the river framing the historic infrastructure of the first industrial landscape.