The Iron Bridge is an attractive if small structure over the River Severn, which was repainted in 2018 to what historians have determined was its original red colour. Set against the background of the picturesque town of Ironbridge, the bridge is not especially impressive until you remember it is now nearly 250 years old. References to this bridge are always careful to describe it as the first ‘major’ bridge to be made from cast iron as there was apparently an abandoned attempt to construct an iron bridge in Lyon in 1755 and a successful, but much smaller, decorative iron bridge in the grounds of Kirklees Hall, Yorkshire in 1769. However, Abraham Darby’s 1779 bridge here has rightfully become one of the iconic symbols of the Industrial Revolution. Even though many larger and/or more ornate bridges have since been constructed, this has the distinction of both being amongst the first and surviving to the present day.

Not too far out the town along the road to the east are the Bedlam furnaces, also free to access although with some signs of ageing, where iron ore was smelted to make the all-important metal. There are more furnaces at the Museum of Iron, which I did not get chance to visit, and at the Blists Hill Victorian Town. The Blists Hill furnaces are newer in construction, built between 1832 and 1844, but are more striking in their huge size and better preserved than the Bedlam furnaces. These furnaces and the remains of a tile and brickworks are the only original features of the Blists Hill site, the many other buildings of the open-air museum having been painstakingly reconstructed brick-by-brick from elsewhere in the Midlands for their preservation. There are various demonstrations around Blists Hill and it is undoubtedly a valuable resource for education about Britain’s industrial history. However, whilst every effort has been made to recreate an authentic Victorian town in both exterior and interior, it feels altogether too tourist-y. This feeling is not helped by the price of admission, which costs £19 as of summer 2021. The exit from the museum passes through a room with the names of various other World Heritage Sites written on the walls and a large picture of the Pyramids of Giza, leaving the visitor to draw their own comparisons between the two sites.

My favourite parts of the site were those that, in planning my visit, I had dismissed as minor attractions. Built next to a quaint canal is the Coalport China Museum, which offers an unexpectedly fascinating insight into the elaborate porcelain that was manufactured here and even the opportunity to step inside the original 19th Century kilns. Coalport china is a well-known feature on the British TV institution of Antiques Roadshow so to see its origins was quite a treat, although I acknowledge this may be of more niche interest. There appeared to be the facilities for making your own pottery in the old workshop although this activity wasn’t running at the time of my visit. The canal at Coalport is connected to the Blists Hill site by a steep railway known as the Hay Inclined Plane, which is sadly no longer operating as it looks to have been a remarkable piece of engineering to transport material decades before steam engines became commonplace using only the gravity of a descending cart to pull the ascending cart uphill. The Jackfield Tile Museum was another surprising treat, with dioramas recreating Covent Garden tube station and a traditional English church, butchers, pub, and more demonstrating all the places tiles are used that I hadn’t considered before. Part of the building that now houses the museum is still an active site for the creation of new tiles used by local artists, some of whose work is displayed and available to purchase, which would provide a unique if heavy souvenir from a visit.

Walking from Ironbridge along the river via the Bedlam furnaces to Coalport then uphill to Blists Hill then back downhill and along the river to Jackfield before finally returning to Ironbridge was a long but rewarding day out. Sadly, there was no time left to visit the missing museums of Ironbridge: Coalbrookdale Iron Museum, home to the original blast furnace where Abraham Darby first revolutionised cast iron manufacture by using coke instead of charcoal; Enginuity, a hands-on science museum that appears to be aimed at children so not for me but a commendable endeavour; the Darby houses, the recreated family home of the man that had the Iron Bridge built; the Tar Tunnel, which is currently closed due to a build-up of toxic gases underground; and the Broseley Pipeworks, an old clay tobacco pipe factory that doesn’t sound too interesting but I thought the same about the China and Tile museums before visiting and they both proved suprisingly good. The one caveat, as most fellow reviewers have noted, is the high cost of entry to these museums. Both the China and Tile museums cost £10 to enter as individual sites and, whilst I enjoyed both, I don’t think I would have paid that much for either on its own. Instead, I had purchased the pass that covers all the museums of the area, which costs £29 as of summer 2021. This provides ‘good value’ relative to buying individual tickets but is still a hefty price and follows the irritating trend of other tourist attractions in the UK in recent years that only sell annual passes at an inflated price and have stopped offering day tickets. I do not live too far from Ironbridge so can come back to visit the missing museums and get good use out of this pass but it is of little use to those visiting from further afield. My recommendation to those not likely to want to come back twice, therefore, is to simply visit the Iron Bridge itself and the Bedlam furnaces as both are free to visit and provide a good fundamental grounding in how this gorge became one of the cradles of the Industrial Revolution.