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Ironbridge Gorge Museum looks forward to a new era with the National Trust - we look back at its history

Museum sites have closed in preparation for reopening under entirely new management, thanks to a takeover by the National Trust, which will mark the start of a new chapter in the museum’s story.

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By Toby Neal
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The original Coalbrookdale museum, established in 1959 by Allied Ironfounders near the Abraham Darby furnace. Likely photographed in the late 1960s; later demolished to make way for car parking.
The original Coalbrookdale museum, established in 1959 by Allied Ironfounders near the Abraham Darby furnace. Likely photographed in the late 1960s; later demolished to make way for car parking.

So let’s take a trip down memory lane to remember some of the key events over the years and the debt owed to the pioneers and visionaries who led the way in ensuring that industrial relics in the Ironbridge Gorge were saved for future generations - which was a near-run thing.

Ironbridge Gorge Museum was set up in October 1967 but had it not been for efforts in the years before then there might not have been much to showcase. Amazingly both the icon of the Industrial Revolution, the Iron Bridge itself, and the Darby furnace, seen as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution as it was here in Coalbrookdale in 1709 that Abraham Darby I first successfully smelted iron using coke instead of charcoal as a fuel, might have disappeared.

There is a story that the Iron Bridge, which was then owned by Shropshire County Council, was once offered for scrap to a local company, Oakley Arnold of Broseley, so long as they would dismantle it. And in the early 1950s there was a serious danger that Darby’s furnace would be dismantled. 

Dr Arthur Raistrick, left, and Fred Williams, at the opening in 1982 of the cover building over the historic Abraham Darby furnace at Coalbrookdale. They were key figures in the preservation of the furnace in the 1950s.
Dr Arthur Raistrick, left, and Fred Williams, at the opening in 1982 of the cover building over the historic Abraham Darby furnace at Coalbrookdale. They were key figures in the preservation of the furnace in the 1950s.

Happily the Iron Bridge - which is today owned by Telford & Wrekin Council and in the care of English Heritage - survived long enough for another revolution to take hold, in attitudes to industrial history, partly spurred by the historian Arthur Raistrick. His 1953 book "Dynasty of Ironfounders: The Darbys and Coalbrookdale" helped kindle interest in the relics and artifacts in the Ironbridge Gorge.