A Victorian Experience

I’ve been a bit remiss in updating recently even though I’ve been doing some work on the ‘van, mainly related to carrying the bike. As I’ve not actually quite finished and have left the bike at home I’ll come back to that another time. I apologise there are no photos. There’s no site WiFi here and I’m not sure the mobile signal is up to it.

It’s been over 20 years since I last visited Ironbridge and the various museums in the group so I decided that another visit was well overdue. I made an early start from home, aiming to be at Blists Hill Victorian Town at around opening time. I would have been somewhat early if I hadn’t got five miles down the road and realised I’d left the cool box behind! I could have managed, of course, but it had the beer in.

Although you can buy single visit tickets if you’re going to more than one museum it’s best to buy the annual passport. This gives unlimited visits for a year to all 10 museums and if you miss some in that year you can still have a single free entry. Having dealt with that, and the gift aid of course, it was coffee and cake time. I was absolutely gasping for a drink by then (and the pub wasn’t yet open).

One thing with Blists Hill is that a lot of the shops sell stuff, you can buy pennies at the bank* or pay with modern currency. I didn’t actually want anything but it’s a good idea for the children. I wandered round some of the town then, inevitably, found a railway. They were running a replica of Trevithick’s Coalbrookdale Loco, almost certainly the first ever railway engine. This predated George Stephenson’s first attempt by some years. He followed that up with the Penydarren engine which did run commercially for a while although it may have been built primarily to win a bet! The trouble was these engines ran on iron plateways which couldn’t take the weight and forces so tended to fracture.

I walked along the canal** to the top of the Hay Inclined Plain. These canals were for tub-boats which were literally lifted out of the water on railway bogies and lowered down the valley sides to Severn***. Last time we were there we did things the wrong way round and had to walk up, although I didn’t use it there is now a modern plane lift part way along the route to avoid the climb. Having walked back towards the town I visited the Telford Toll House and a miner’s cottage. There’s a bit of a contrast particularly when according to the census returns the former originally housed just a man and a boy in a few large rooms while the latter, in two small rooms plus a store, once had 9 people living there. I decided it was refreshment time so left the rest of that end of the town for later and went to the pub. Unfortunately I didn’t have 9 1/2d on me so had to hand over £3.80 instead! It was a decent pint of Thwaites’  Cumberland Ale, not exactly local but the alternative was Banks’s which I really don’t enjoy.

The afternoon started with a train ride (inevitably). I’ve been down coal mines, a lead mine and a copper mine, here it was a clay mine, albeit just a replica tunnel. I hadn’t realised that the red clay was mined as rock, not clay as we think of it. Visiting the rest of the town I chatted with a few of the attendants about the exhibits, including the chap running a 60hp oil engine. I must admit the slow speed and lovely noise was mesmerising. Part of the discussion was about the fact they shouldn’t be called Diesel engines as he pinched the idea, similarly the Davey Lamp as it’s often known may have been preceded by the Geordie Lamp (back to our friend Mr Stephenson mentioned above). By mid-afternoon I’d really seen pretty much everything so headed to the caravan site. It really is in the middle of nowhere and took a bit of finding as the post code takes you some way away. It’s peaceful enough though. Being a no facility site I’m on my own resources. I can manage well enough for a few days.

Dinner had come from home anyway, I prepared a lamb casserole last night but didn’t cook it. Five minutes simmer this morning then into a wide-mouth Thermos flask for the day. It was just about still hot enough 10+ hours later but I boiled it up for a couple of minutes anyway so it was piping hot. I’d made a bit too much and overfilled the flask but it was lovely and tender whilst the potato wasn’t overdone. Tomorrow I’ll go to the Telford Railway but I’m not sure what else I’ll do. I’d left time in the programme for a second visit to Blists Hill if needed. I’m planning to visit the other museums I particularly want to see on Monday so I’ll have a look at the road atlas in a minute and see if I can play Brown Sign Bingo.

There were two things I saw at Blists Hill that I found disappointing. One I knew about already, the Spry, probably the last Severn Trow (traditional cargo boat) was rebuilt some years back. After a brief time in the water at Gloucester Docks it’s now stuck on dry land in a shed that’s been built around it. You can’t even really see it properly there’s so little space. A good few years ago on TV they helped restore a steam crane for the museum. That’s now sat outside with no protection and the boiler is rusting so will need replacing again.


*I wonder if I’m the only visitor who expects Pike to be behind the counter and Mainwaring saying, “You stupid boy!” It’s that sort of bank.

**The canal could do with serious attention from my friends in the waterway recovery group!

***Strictly it should always be referred to as just Severn, never The Severn or River Severn.