Swollen by the night’s rains, the River Severn flowed smoothly through the valley. Above it the delicate lattice-work arc of the bridge leapt like a salmon. Day-trippers crossed the span. The scene was reminiscent of that painted over 240 years earlier by William Williams – all that was missing was a rowboat of magnificently behatted ladies beneath us on the river. The entire scene was quaint, almost pastoral, with the river rolling below the tree-garlanded hills and the stonework of Ironbridge village’s church glowing in the late afternoon sun. Yet my thoughts turned to a different painting – Philip James de Loutherbourg’s Coalbrookdale by Night, where the heavens are lit up by the infernal flare of forge and furnace. And I was reminded that the Iron Bridge, graceful as it remains, was a product of intensive industrialisation that must have been utterly terrifying to many.

The Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site has a dual identity. The image everybody sees is the bridge itself, the world’s first to be constructed of iron. The bridge is in and of itself deserving of inscription – more so than, say, the Forth Bridge that followed 109 years later. And the village of Ironbridge remains exceptionally pretty, a lovely spot for a stroll and a bite to eat in a tea shop. But the bridge was essentially the shop window of the local ironmasters, principally Abraham Darby III. The bridge was needed to link the two sides of a river too shallow for ferries in summer and too violent in winter. But it was also largely an advertising gimmick. The bridge was built not at the most convenient place along the river but at its most dramatic. And Darby actively commissioned Williams’s painting to attract attention (in fact an engraving of the scene even made its way to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello). By demonstrating a new and ingenious way to use iron, Darby and his fellow manufacturers were touting their own wares. Because the second identity of this World Heritage Site is the expansion of industry in this part of previously rural Shropshire sparked by Darby’s grandfather (Abraham Darby I) and his use of coke rather than charcoal to smelt iron. By the time the bridge was built the area was thick with foundries, with the wider area being known as Coalbrookdale. In my eyes it would be fairer to recognise the site with a name reflecting this: Coalbrookdale and the Iron Bridge.

(Sidebar: I love the fact that the placenames in the locality are so matter-of-fact. Coal was excavated in Coalbrookdale. It was shipped down the river from Coalport. The bridge was just called The Iron Bridge and the village that grew around it was called Ironbridge. You are also only about 20 miles away from one of my favourite placenames in the UK, the mysteriously named ‘New Invention’!)

The site boundaries extend upstream and then to the north up a side valley to the smaller area now referred to as Coalbrookdale and downstream to Jackfield and Coalport and from there again to the north to Madeley. In all 4 miles of river is covered. There are a number of locations to investigate to get the most out of any visit and appreciate the industrial background to the bridge. One of my pet peeves is visiting a World Heritage Site and finding that different components are operated separately meaning that you have to pay multiple entrance fees. Happily, here the Ironbridge Museums Trust operates all the attractions. Entrance is pretty expensive, as others have mentioned, and some components are only of specialised interest so I’d advise a careful decision on what you want to (and have time to) see and pay accordingly. For those who want to see absolutely e-ve-ry-thing there are joint tickets. As we live less than two hours away we decided to get an annual family pass for £76.

Yet the most important parts of the site are free. Crossing the bridge has been free to pedestrians since 1950. The tolls charged previously can still be seen on the tollhouse (now a free exhibition / giftshop) on the south side of the bridge; I particularly like the note that tolls were payable by all, explicitly including the Royal Family. As the tolls were set in an 18th century Act of Parliament they were not subject to inflation and a pedestrian would have been charged the same half-penny in the 1940s as they would in the 1790s. It also meant some creative thinking was needed to set fares when motor vehicles – and on one occasion a circus elephant – crossed. It is a pleasant walk downstream to the remains of the Bedlam Furnaces (those depicted in de Loutherbourg’s painting and now believed to be where the iron for the bridge was cast). And 1 ½ miles uphill into Coalbrookdale you can see the remains of the original 1658 blast furnace where a 31-year-old Abraham Darby I first pioneered the use of coke over charcoal in 1709. You can see all of these for free, your only expense will be transport. Parking in Ironbridge is run by the council and yet (my other pet peeve) different carparks charge different amounts. Top tip looks to be that on the south bank right by the tollhouse which charges £1.60 for 2 hours and is free after 5pm (plenty of time for a stroll around the village though maybe a bit short for a more leisurely exploration up to Coalbrookdale, down to Bedlam and back). Car parks at other sites (including Coalbrookdale and Jackfield is free for the first 30 minutes, and then £1.00 an hour, up to a maximum of £5.00).

Coalbrookdale should be your next stop. Alongside the Old Furnaces you can find the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron (£10 for adults, £6.50 for children) and, next door, a children’s hands-on science museum (Enginuity - £10 for adults, £6.50 for children – actually quite informative in the displays; my son particularly liked the water table where you use dams to create power and the interactive blast furnace where you jump about to light the coke, smash the iron ore etc), both in buildings formerly part of the ironworks. The Trust also maintains two houses occupied by the Darby family and dressed up in period fashion (£6.50 / £4.25) as well as the nearby Quaker Burial Ground (half the investors in the bridge were Quakers – there is an interesting argument that in a society where traditionally the first-born sons of wealthy families pursued military careers, the second-born went into the Church of England, and any remaining sought Government jobs the Quakers, as pacifists, non-Anglicans and believers that swearing oaths of loyalty was contrary to the ten commandments were very well placed to dominate business in England in the 18th century).

The most popular site is probably Blists Hill Victorian Town (£20 for adults, £13 for children). This is a recreated town of 1900 (and hence more than a century after the Darbys built their forges and the bridge, but I suppose calling something ‘Victorian’ evokes that industrial setting to more people than calling it ‘Georgian’ which reeks of Jane Austen gentility). Blists Hill may seem quite kitschy at first glance – on entrance you can visit the town bank to exchange your modern money for old school sixpences and ha’pennies to be spent onsite and the various shops and workshops are populated by costumed craftsmen. Bringing my own kids here, 33 years after I visited on a school trip, and the cart-horses, traditional sweet shop and the fair on the village green were the main hits. And it is expensive. But it has not been fabricated out of whole cloth. There are in situ remains of the area’s industry (the Madeley Wood blast furnaces, a brick and tile works, a mine shaft and the canal), largely as ‘found landscape’, and other buildings like the butcher’s, the school and the pub, have been relocated, mostly locally, as demonstrated in the estate office on site. So actually it is half skansen, half theme park and I have a lot of love for it. Plus, the video demonstration upon entering probably gives the best feeling of all the components of just how terrifying and yet how transformative the industrialisation of the gorge would have been.

Other areas of note relate to industrial enterprises that used local-sourced clay rather than coal and iron. There is a museum devoted to china porcelain in Coalport (£10 / £6.50), one devoted to decorative tiles in Jackfield (£10 / £6.50), and one devoted to tobacco pipes across the river in Broseley (£6.50 / £4.25 - erratic opening hours, and I didn't visit). The Coalport China Museum is also the location from where tours (£3.00 / £2.00) set off to visit the ‘Tar Tunnel’; intended to provide a tunnel for the Shropshire Canal it was abandoned for that purpose when it hit a well of raw bitumen. It is no longer possible to enter the tunnel but the seeping tar can be seen from the entrance. The canal was completed instead with the Hay Inclined Plane, visible from Blists Hill, where barges were raised and lowered via funicular. I particularly enjoyed the Jackfield Tile Museum which showcased the evolving styles of ceramic tiles between the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as recreating some tiled interiors of a butcher’s, a church, a pub and Covent Garden tube station. Without the cachet of a World Heritage listing (and the income from the other locations, principally Blist’s Hill I imagine) I sincerely doubt these would have been preserved, so they are well worth a look if you have time.

Whilst very attractive and in places informative and entertaining Ironbridge Gorge is not the most awe-inspiring World Heritage Site to a modern visitor. But I like to keep in mind that back in the 1780s the bridge would have been a genuine wonder and the industrial ironworks landscape would have been truly terrifying. This is in my view the most important ‘industrial’ site on the List in the UK. The advances in the scale, speed and scope of iron manufacturing pioneered here pretty much acted as the enabler for the 18th-19th century Industrial Revolution. It is a shame that – other than the Iron Bridge – much of what the visitor today sees are either the ruins of that revolution (blast furnaces) or a reconstructed / relocated replica of what a later period would have looked like. Despite that, there is actually a surprising amount to see and do in a relatively compact area.

World Heritage-iness: 4

Our Experience: 3.5

(Visited August 2021 to July 2022)