Any old iron? Marketing models and sustainable regeneration in Ironbridge

Abstract

The heritage offer at Ironbridge is long established: for over 50 years, the story has been told of innovation and technological development in the Ironbridge Gorge at the beginning of the industrial revolution. That story achieved even higher recognition over 25 years ago when the area was awarded World Heritage Site status, recognising its outstanding universal value of technological innovation. The heritage product at Ironbridge has changed in significant ways over time reflecting increased competition in the sector, the transformed expectations of the visitors and varied responses by the museum trust to political agendas to which the sector must respond in order to gain support for its activities. It is also demonstrable that the very success of Ironbridge has transformed the appearance, and demographics of this part of what were historically a fiercely working class East Shropshire coalfield. Not the least of the successes has been to turn the area into a desirable place to live again, but not for the working classes who have been superseded by a more affluent sector of society. The aim of this paper was to explore the nature of these changes and to provide an overview of how the perception of heritage in the area has shifted over time.

Keywords:

• Ironbridge
• Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust
• Telford New Town
• World Heritage

Notes

¹ The prehistory of the founding of the museum, and the growing awareness of the significance of the site, has recently been sketched out in Beale, The Ironbridge Spirit, 9–15.

² The Darby Family is core to the traditional view of Coalbrookdale and its development, and hence the World Heritage narrative. This view stems from the academic biography of the Darby family written by the industrial historian Raistrick (Dynasty of Iron Founders). Modern research has tended to bring out the contribution of other iron masters, such as John Wilkinson (Dawson, John Wilkinson) and the Brookes family (Belford and Ross, “English Steelmaking in the Seventeenth Century”).

³ Trinder, Industrial Archaeology of Shropshire.

⁴ Although the story is worth telling. For an insider’s perspective, see Darby, “Ironworks to Museum”.

⁵ The quote is from the book title of Beale, The Ironbridge Spirit.

⁶ On the East Shropshire coalfield landscape, see Trinder, Industrial Archaeology of Shropshire, 77–133. For an idea of the blighted landscape in the 1950s, one needs only to turn to the photographic record, best seen in Cossons and Sowden, Ironbridge. Landscape of Industry.

⁷ Cossons and Sowden, Ironbridge. Landscape of Industry, 84.

⁸ Photographs of many of these lost monuments can be found in a number of compilation volumes. Among the most accessible is Evans and Briscoe, Telford. A Pictorial History. For the Blaenavon landscape, see http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/984 [accessed 20 August 2015].

⁹ Kynaston, Austerity Britain 1945–51 gives the fullest modern account of the dire straits that Britain found itself in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

¹⁰ Harold Wilson delivered this quote in his speech at the Labour Party Conference on 1 October 1963. He later commented that by making the reference he had wished to ‘replace the cloth cap [with] the white laboratory coat as the symbol of British labour’; see http://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2013/sep/19/harold-wilson-white-heat-technology-speech [accessed 20 August 2015].

¹¹ Specifically, the Benthall water wheel, a major attraction for visitors to the gorge and the Iron Bridge in the Victorian era, was allowed fall into disrepair before 1935. The waterwheel was scrapped during World War 2 (http://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=544945&resourceID=2) [accessed 23 August 2015]. The extensive galleries cut into the limestone of Lincoln Hill were filled in during the 1970s; Clark, Ironbridge Gorge, 77–8.

¹² Information on the open-cast mining carried out before major road construction was passed onto the author by the Telford Development Corporation Mining Engineer, Dr Ivor Brown (personal communication, March 2005). The story of Telford’s development is told in De Soissons, Telford. The section on reclamation is at 82–5 where the number of capped mines quoted may be found.

¹³ For images of the newly relocated ‘David’ and ‘Samson’ engines, see Bracegirdle and Miles, Darbys and the Ironbridge Gorge, photographs, 102–5.

¹⁴ Rix, “Industrial Archaeology”, 1955. Although, as has been pointed out, the term was used earlier in other languages (Trinder, “Industrial Archaeology: The Twentieth Century Context,” 45.

¹⁵ This early recognition is clearly signalled by the presentation to the then Dawley Development Corporation of an idea for an open-air museum in the Gorge, by Kate Bishop of John Madin and Partners, the developing architects for the New Town, as noted in Beale, The Ironbridge Spirit, 18.

¹⁶ De Soissons, Telford, 75. The designations of ‘open space’ and ‘woodland’ appear on the 1977 Development Strategy map for Telford, reproduced in De Soissons, Telford, 114.

¹⁷ Xie, Industrial Heritage Tourism; and Hissey, Leisurely Tour of England, 231.

¹⁸ A visual record of the early stages of Blists Hill is provided in Bracegirdle and Miles. The decision to use ca. 1900 as the setting of the town, and the use of costumed interpreters is noted in Beale, The Ironbridge Spirit, 39.

¹⁹ Forsyte Sage (BBC, 1967); Upstairs, Downstairs (London Weekend Television, 1971–75).

²⁰ Beale, The Ironbridge Spirit, 49–73.

²¹ The current retrospective Statement of Outstanding Universal Value, adopted in 2013 and based on the revision of 2008, identifies five key areas within the gorge, but excludes Broseley (WHC 32COM 8B.91; http://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/1564; WHC 37COM 8E http://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/4964). The subject is still under debate since in the Broseley Town Council Planning Minutes of 24/4/14, page 3 it is said that an extension to the World Heritage Site boundary to include Broseley was under consideration (http://www.2shrop.net/2shropnet/AToZOfMini-sites/B/BroseleyTownCouncil/PlanningCommittee). This was to be followed up in subsequent meeting of the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site Steering Group meeting on 24/7/14 (http://www.telford.gov.uk/downloads/file/3063/web_report_of_ironbridge_gorge_world_heritage_site_steering_group_meeting_24_july_2014) [all sites accessed 25 August 2015].

²² Clark and Alfrey, Jackfield and Broseley. This grey literature report formed the academic source for the published report: Alfrey and Clark, The Landscape of Industry.

²³ It is telling, for example, that the official press release about Ironbridge’s inscription was handled by museum staff, not by Telford Development Council. As Beale comments, ‘in those days [1986] the significance of World Heritage Site status was comparatively little understood’ (Beale, The Ironbridge Spirit, 73–4).

²⁴ Blaenavon’s World Heritage Day takes place in June, the first taking place in 2000, as noted in the South Wales Argus report on the 14th event published on 30/6/14: http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/11308472.Hundreds_celebrate_Blaenavon_World_Heritage_Day/?ref=var_0 [accessed 23 August 2015]. The Ironbridge World Heritage Day takes place in September with the first one being held in 2004 [Joanne Smith IGMT, personal communication 25/8/15].

²⁵ Museums Association Cuts Survey 2014 (published 26/11/14). http://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/funding-cuts/cuts-survey [accessed 23 August 2015].

²⁶ Beale, The Ironbridge Spirit, 82–107; the passport is noted at p. 50.

²⁷ These concepts are discussed in more detail by the current author in the paper delivered at the Interpret Europe Conference, Krakow, June 2015: ‘Trouble at t’mill. Interpreting industrial working lives in Heritage Attractions.’ http://www.interpret-europe.net/top/whats-on/events/events-archive/2015conference/presentations-and-workshops.html [accessed 23 August 2015].

²⁸ Beale, The Ironbridge Spirit, 91–2.