The Ironbridge Gorge and the immediate area have become iconic in the history of the Industrial Revolution. The location had plentiful coal, ironstone, limestone, and the navigable River Severn and was where Abraham Darby developed a process of making pig iron in a blast furnace with coke made from coal rather than charcoal made from wood. Ultimately this change made it possible to make far more iron without the limitations of charcoal burning in woodland, a skilled and time consuming process. His grandson Abraham Darby III made the world’s first cast iron bridge, the Ironbridge, which gave its name to the adjacent village and then the gorge itself. By the late 20th century most of the industry had left the area, but several museums were established including what is now the Blists Hill Victorian Town, an open air museum of rebuilt period buildings and replicas inspired by historical records.
Blists Hill allows you to experience the sights and sounds of a town in the area at the end of the 19th century, including some original buildings drawn from the towns and villages in or near the Lilleshall Estate. Blists Hill and the other Ironbridge Gorge Museums are run by the Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust, which is supported by donations, ticket and shop sales, grants, and the Friends of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum.
There are several properties at Blists Hill with direct connections to the Lilleshall Estate and the Leveson-Gowers’ interests:
A Duke of Sutherland cottage, one of the standard designs used across the Lilleshall Estate. At Blists Hill it has the role of the doctor’s house with access to the ground floor interior. It was originally Number 15, Wellington Road, Donnington.
Samson and David were beam engines which supplied forced air to the blast furnaces of the Duke of Sutherland’s Lilleshall Company at its Priorslee Ironworks.
Canals
The Ironbridge Gorge Museums have several exhibits related to the Levenson-Gower family’s canal interests.
A warehouse from the Newport Branch of the Shropshire Union canal was rescued and rebuilt in Blists Hill and is now presented as S. V. Woolley’s carpentry workshop. You can go inside and see the structure of the building including the hatches in the ceiling to allow goods to be winched upstairs. A similar warehouse is still in place in Newport beside the canal and the Blists Hill warehouse was originally just a few yards away.
Iron tub boat from the local canals, found on a farm in 1972. Tub boat canals were narrower and had shorter maximum lengths than standard gauge canals. Several tub boats were tied in a line and drawn by a single horse. The Leveson-Gowers were investors in most of the tub boat canals.
A stretch of the Shropshire Canal runs through the Blists Hill site. The 1st Marquess of Stafford, father to the 1st Duke of Sutherland, was one of the original investors in the canal. This was a tub boat canal with narrow guillotine locks where each gate was raised vertically rather than having a pair of horizontally mounted gates. The canal ran south to the Ironbridge Gorge and the River Severn via the steep Hay Inclined Plane within Blists Hill, with wagons on rails to carry the small tub boats between levels of the canal. It also ran north to meet the Donnington Wood Canal which connected to the Duke’s Donnington coal mines and lime quarries near Lilleshall.
