‘The most extraordinary district in the world’
We have just had a wonderful and truly memorable visit (early November 2026 – last here forty years ago) to Ironbridge, Blists Hill and Coalbrookdale. As a National Trust member, I thought I might pen a few lines about how moved I have been so as to contribute to the conversations about the evolution of the site.
I think it was seeing the N.T.’s mission statement about, “Addressing barriers that prevent people engaging with heritage. We will continue to deepen the sites’ strong appeal for people through visitor experience and storytelling that brings history to life’ that particularly inspired me: a heartwarming address.
And then another: ‘We want to understand how people would like to experience and get involved … and will be taking time to listen to you. We’ll be working with communities and visitors to build on the museums’ legacies and help shape what the future of Ironbridge Gorge National Trust looks like. This is the start of a long-term vision for the future.’
One further mission statement before I pen a response in the tone and spirit requested: ‘Ironbridge Gorge National Trust could be a place … of ideas and inspiration. We aim to bring together parties, local industries and creative enterprises to make past achievements relevant to today. We hope to inspire everyone, especially children and young people to become the innovators of the future.’
Those words and my visits to the three sites mentioned in the first paragraph have led to five points that I shall pursue in something of a disquisition:
- Trades Unionism and social history
- The birth of the industrial revolution and ‘The Age of the Anthropocene’
- Global links and ‘decolonising the landscape’
- Pop-up museums
- Writing groups
As regards the first point, I felt that Blists Hill/The Victorian Town could do with more substance about trade unions and workers’ conditions and family life. There is a framed poster referencing the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners but the only other reference to trade unions is negative: the 1912 miners’ strike is mentioned only in terms of raising costs and hence the closure of works at Blists Hill.
1912 MINERS’ STRIKE AND BLAST FURNCE CLOSURE …
… a miners’ strike in 1912 led to a shortage of coal and the blast furnaces became too expensive to run. They were blown out and never reopened …’
The recreated Victorian town (1900) has lots of posters (slightly anachronistic?) about ‘Votes for Women’; references to trades unionism could occur too, perhaps?
After all, there had been the wave of ‘New Unionism’ organizing the unskilled in the late 1880s (with women to the fore) and there was the industrial strife just before the First World War involving the Triple Industrial Alliance of miners, dockers and railway workers. Perhaps more trade union notices and posters and memorabilia might be added to the sights of the town?
And perhaps more text on working and living conditions and pay and prices and ‘costs of living crises’, with actors too. Perhaps a staged trade union meeting where young people witness debates about the pros and cons of going on strike and what a strike is and what a trade union is too.
IRONBRIDGE GORGE NATIONAL TRUST
Could be a place …
Of connections
‘We hope to create experiences that connect people with each other, with stories and with place. By using epic world-changing stories, we can spark curiosity and connect people to the great minds of innovators and the hard work of those who shaped our world.’
(My italics)
I didn’t have time to listen to THE LIVES OF OTHERS at Coalbrookdale: a section on headphones about working people. But, the title itself could do with some rewording in the future, perhaps? The title is almost slightly suggestive of that military construct, ‘other ranks’ …
Perhaps there could be future projects involving the census returns for the area, thus rescuing the poor and anonymous ‘from the enormous condescension of posterity.’
The National Trust, with outreach programmes, could facilitate this perhaps, and pop-up museums or displays could be displayed in local pubs and cafes. The coracle museum sets a precedent for emulation and diversification (point four).
There is another precedent: https://designpenguin.co.uk/portfolio/ironbridge-the-daily-grind/
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/feb/25/working-class-history-worth-singing-about
Now to the second point: ‘The Ironbridge Gorge offers a powerful insight into the origins of the Industrial Revolution and also offers extensive evidence of that period when the area was the focus of international attention from artists, engineers and writers …’
It might well be that a new generation of visitors might have a completely new and different perspective on the birth of the industrial revolution compared to mine (brought up on the joys of industrial archaeology). A point of view that references concepts such as ‘The Age of the Anthropocene’ – perhaps future information boards could include such constructs within discussions.
Now to point number three: global links, starting with the information presented about RICHARD REYNOLDS at Coalbrookdale:
‘Richard Reynolds, a Quaker, was born in Bristol in 1735. His father was an iron merchant whose firm, Daniels and Reynolds, were important customers of the Coalbrookdale Company. Reynolds arrived in Coalbrookdale in 1756 to represent Thomas Goldney’s interests … Reynolds formed the Bristol Company of Ironmasters, bought shares in the Ketley and Horsehay Ironworks, and land from Abraham Darby the third, becoming the principal landlord of the Coalbrookdale Company. He replaced Goldney as the main financier of the Company …
(My italics)
Some of the wealth of the Goldney dynasty came from the production of brass manillas (used as currency in the transatlantic chattel slave trade) … so following the money … we trace a line from Coalbrookdale to Bristol; from Bristol to Africa; from Africa to the West Indies; from the West Indies to Bristo, and thence from to Coalbrookdale: this line is traced in a crimson wake.
Back to the information boards:
‘Ironbridge Gorge is widely regarded as the birthplace of the industrial revolution, which paved the way for the scientific and technological innovation that define our world today. The site is an example of British ingenuity, a source of immense national and community pride and a distinct and much-loved icon of our shared heritage. I cannot think of something more at home in the National Trust’s care – an institution built to protect and preserve the things our nation loves on behalf of everyone, everywhere.
Hilary McGrady National Trust Director-General
(My italics)
I think the italicised words have a particular resonance in this context …
But back to the Goldney link and these words from the Bristol University website:
‘Thomas Goldney the third and his father held controlling shares in Abraham Darby’s ironworks at Coalbrookdale – bought with profits from these voyages. The ironworks produced brass objects which slavers used to trade for people. The Goldney family business relied on ongoing development of transatlantic expeditions, and the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.’
And now these words from a ‘University of Bristol spokesperson’: “Goldney Hall has ties to the slave trade as the Goldney family funded several ships that took part in the triangular slave trade.”
But now back to Richard Reynolds and the interpretation boards at Colabrookdale:
‘…Richard Reynolds returned to Bristol in 1804 where he took an interest in the city’s charities … He was also a strong supporter of the anti-slavery movement.’
It might be thought, perhaps, that this foregrounding of the praiseworthy personal occludes the view of the earlier structural forces at work linking the Goldney dynasty with Coalbrookdale and Ironbridge.
I wonder if some thought might be given to this point of view in the future?
There is, of course, a display board at Coalbrookdale, entitled COALBROOKDALE GOES GLOBAL
The display foregrounds 19th century exports and the reign of Queen Victoria – thus omitting the 18th century provenance mentioned earlier when THE GLOBAL FUNDED COALBROOKDALE
Finally in this section, I noticed the timeline running along the wall omitted the 1833 Abolition of Slavery and the consequent compensation paid to enslavers. Perhaps this might be somehow inserted in the future?
Time for numbers four and five: pop-up museums and writing groups.
I saw this at Coalbrookdale:
‘Facsimile of pages from Abraham Darby the Third’s ledger, dated 1771-1781 The ledger records the costs of building the Iron Bridge. The ledger also gives a rare glimpse into the people involved in the project, listing workers, contractors and even purchases such as beer for the workforce.’
(My italics)
Using records such as these and the pictures from the time (with writing-guides, perhaps), the young, the old, individuals, couples, family groups and community groups could both develop their own skills and also contribute to an exercise in historiography/creative writing/documentary fiction/‘faction’ that could build bridges: a periodically updated record would show people a variety of genres and points of view different from their own: an exercise in community cohesion.
‘The other workmen that we have records of are Edward Bear, the mine-burner, Richard Knowles, who stoked the charging house with raw materials, Richard Hart, the filler, John Felton, the furnace keeper and John Tyler, the founder. The founder keeper and founder earned the highest wages as the most skilled men. Most 18th century workers are anonymous. The only records we have are those who are shown in artwork from the time.’
(My italics)
This brings to mind EP Thompson’s plea in The Making of the English Working Class that we should rescue the poor and anonymous ‘from the enormous condescension of posterity’ … writing groups perhaps?
‘After some time he had a mind to set the Dutchmen to try to cast Iron Pots in sand. They tried several times but could not do it …At length, John Thomas, my Father, then a young man who came on trial to learn the trade of Malt Mill making, seeing the Dutchmen try and could not bring to perfection, asked the master to let him try, so with his leave he did it, and afterwards his Master and him were bound in Articles in the year 1707 that John Thomas should be bound to work at that business and keep it secret and not teach anybody else, for three years. They were so private as to stop the keyhole of the door.’
The above offers material, I think, for creative writing, as does Richard Reynolds with the social history involved in the creation of his Sabbath Walks:
‘In the 1780s he created the Sabbath Walks in Coalbrookdale. These were among the first public walks in Britain and were for the benefit of the workers.’ (Creative writing in situ?)
‘He also built housing and schools for the workers and their children.’
(More scope for community pop-up museums: in churches?)
CONCLUSION
‘The approach to Coalbrookdale appeared to be a veritable descent into the infernal regions. A dense column of smoke rose from the earth; volumes of steam were ejected from fire engines; a blacker cloud issued from a tower in which was a forge and smoke arose from a mountain of burning coals which burst out into turbid flames.’
Carlo Castone della di Renzionico Comasco, 1787
Pandaemonium or Paradise Lost:
‘There stood a Hill not far whose griesly top
Belch’d fire and rowling smoak; the rest entire
Shon with a glossie scurff, undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic Ore,
The work of Sulphur. Thither wing’d with speed
A numerous Brigad hasten’d …
Of Pioners with Spade and Pickaxe arm’d …
Mammon led them on,
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
From heav’n, for even in heav’n his looks and thoughts
We’re always downwards bent, admiring more
The riches of Heav’ns pavement, trod’ Gold,
Than aught divine or holy …
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransack’ the Center, and with impious hands
Rifl’d the bowels of thir mother Earth
For Treasures better hid …’
Or, more prosaically:
The Age of the Anthropocene:
The Age of the Capitalocene:
The Dawning of the Age of the Enlightenment:
An Age that worshipped the Mathematical,
The Observational, the Empirical, Theoretical,
Rational, Practical, Experimental,
Scientifical, Analytical,
Geological, Geographical,
Topographical, Toponymical,
Longitudinal, Latitudinal,
Geometrical, Trigonometrical,
Algebraical, Electrical,
Physical, Geophysical,
Political, Geopolitical,
Alchemical, Chemical, Philosophical,
Metaphysical, Epistemological,
Anthropological, Panopticonal,
Phenomenological, Cosmological,
Barometrical, Meteorological,
Mechanical, Metallurgical,
Agricultural, Horticultural,
Metrical, Lexical, Grammatical,
Syntactical, Ecclesiastical,
Hierarchical, Monarchical,
Cartographical and Capital…
Which meant at home:
‘The approach to Coalbrookdale appeared to be a veritable descent into the infernal regions. A dense column of smoke rose from the earth; volumes of steam were ejected from fire engines; a blacker cloud issued from a tower in which was a forge and smoke arose from a mountain of burning coals which burst out into turbid flames.’
While returning to the global from the local:
The Navigational, Colonial, Imperial, Martial;
The transatlantic chattel slave trade:
The Black Atlantic Archipelago:
And so back to Coalbrookdale.
And as Raphael Samuel put it in Theatres of Memory Past and Present in Contemporary Culture,
‘…history is not the prerogative of the historian, nor even, as postmodernism contends, a historian’s “invention”. It is rather, a social form of knowledge…’
‘The immaculate conception of knowledge – with its insistence on keeping inquiry within the boundaries of the discipline, and its refusal to countenance any traffic between the imaginary and the real – is impossible, in practice, to sustain. There are to begin with the silences and gaps in the written record which only inference can fill … Even when we are immersed in the minutiae of empirical research, we are continually having to abandon the world of hard, verifiable fact for the more pliable one of interpretation and conjecture …’
‘History has always been a hybrid form of knowledge, syncretising past and present, memory and myth, the written record and the spoken word. Its subject matter is promiscuous.’
Penultimately, here’s Hilary Mantel on that hoary old chestnut, ‘What is History?’ ‘… history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record. It’s the plan of the positions taken, when we stop the dance to note them down. It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it …’
Finally, William Faulkner, then Raphael Samuel again:
William Faulkner: “The past is not dead. It is not even past yet.”
Workshop of the World
Raphael Samuel
Edited by John Merrick
Verso 2024
‘The orthodox account of the industrial revolution concentrates on the rise of steam power and machinery, and the spread of the factory system … But if one looks at the economy as a whole rather than at its most novel and striking features, a less orderly canvas might be drawn – one bearing more resemblance to a Breugel or even a Hieronymus Bosch than to the geometrical regularities of a modern abstract. The industrial landscape would be seen to be full of diggings and pits, as well as tall factory chimneys. Smithies would sprout in the shadows of the furnaces …’
Perhaps community pens could sprout in the shadows too …