Tractor & Construction Plant Wiki
Register
Advertisement

Coordinates: 52°38′20″N 2°29′35″W / 52.639°N 2.493°W / 52.639; -2.493

Ironbridge over the river Seven- 2006 - DSCF0055

The "Ironbridge" over the river Seven in Shropshire

Enginuity Museum

The entrance to Enginuity Museum

Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust is an industrial heritage organisation which runs ten museums and manages 35 historic sites within the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, widely considered as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.

Located at Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale and Broseley on the River Severn, the area is a World Heritage Site and an anchor point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH).

Museums[]

Beam engine at Coalbrookdale

The Beam engine at Blist Hill Victorian Town

The ten museum sites run by the Trust, collectively known as the Ironbridge Gorge Museums are:

  1. Blists Hill Victorian Town, including the Hay Inclined Plane
  2. Broseley Pipeworks
  3. Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron
  4. Coalport China Museum
  5. Coalport Tar Tunnel
  6. Darby Houses
  7. Enginuity
  8. Iron Bridge and Tollhouse
  9. Jackfield Tile Museum
  10. Museum of the Gorge

Also associated with the ten Trust museums are the Maws Craft Centre at Jackfield and the Merrythought museum at Dale End.[1]

The Trust[]

Ironbridge detail - DSCF0057

The fine detail of the cast iron structure on the "Ironbridge"

Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust was established in 1967 to preserve and interpret the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the Ironbridge Gorge. It is an independent educational charity.[2]

Its present CEO is Steve Miller, who took over from Glen Lawes in 2007. Previous CEOs have included Stuart Smith and Sir Neil Cossons, both well-respected experts on industrial history and archaeology.

The museum staff manage 35 historic sites within the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site, including ten museums. The sites also include archaeological sites, two chapels, housing, two Quaker burial grounds, a research library, a tourist information centre, woodland, and two youth hostels.

For over 20 years the museum also had a wide-ranging and innovative archaeology unit[3] which undertook archaeological work within the Ironbridge Gorge and throughout the country. This was disbanded in 2009 along with the loss of many curatorial and other staff.

In recent years the academic and curatorial roles of the Trust have been reduced in favour of its role as a heritage tourism attraction.[citation needed]

Ironbridge Institute[]

The Trust also runs the Ironbridge Institute in Coalbrookdale, a centre offering postgraduate and professional courses in heritage, in partnership with the University of Birmingham.

References[]

External links[]


Smallwikipedialogo This page uses some content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Tractor & Construction Plant Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons by Attribution License and/or GNU Free Documentation License. Please check page history for when the original article was copied to Wikia


Advertisement