Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron

Coalbrookdale
Telford
Shropshire
TF8 7DQ
England

Website

www.ironbridge.org.uk/our_attractions/coalbrookdale_museum_of_iron/

E-mail

Visitor Information Centre

tic@ironbridge.org.uk

Telephone

Visitor Information Centre

01952 433 424

All information is drawn or provided by the venues themselves and every effort is made to ensure it is correct. Please remember to double check opening hours with the venue concerned before making a special visit.

Step inside the mighty Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron and discover the revolutionary techniques that made Coalbrookdale the most famous ironworks in the world. Explore the remains of the water powered blast furnace where Abraham Darby I perfected the smelting of iron with coke instead of charcoal.

• Marvel at the great skill of the Coalbrookdale craftsmen in a fabulous display of domestic and decorative ironwork.
• View fantastic works of art that bring the Industrial Revolution to life
• Admire the Boy and Swan Fountain cast by the Coalbrookdale Company in 1851 for the Great Exhibition
• Take a look at the magnificent Deerhound Table designed by John Bell for the Paris International Exhibition of 1855
• Discover the cast iron Coalbrookdale Cooking Pots that launched Abraham Darby I into the iron trade.

Venue Type:

Museum, Archaeological site, Industrial heritage site, Heritage site

Opening hours

Daily from 10am until 5pm

Closed: 24 & 25 December and 01 January

Admission charges

Adult £7.60, 60 Plus £7.10 and Child £5.10

Annual Passport Ticket for all ten of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums allowing repeat visits all year - Adult £22.50, 60 Plus £18.25, Child £14.75 and Family £61.50 (2A & 3C)

Discounts

Museums Association
International Council of Museums
English Heritage

Getting there

The Ironbridge Gorge is on the River Severn, 5 miles (8km) south of Telford town centre in Shropshire. Take junction 4 or junction 6 off the M54. Follow brown and white signs to Ironbridge Gorge.

For Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron, Enginuity and Darby Houses, follow Coalbrookdale Museums.

This museum has a Designated Collection of national importance.

The Museum believes that it has the most comprehensive range of the Coalbrookdale Company’s best designs and most accomplished castings. Between the 1840s and the First World War, the quality of Coalbrookdale castings was second to none. Castings range from decorative fire grates, through furniture, household ornaments, to both civic and domestic architectural features and statuary.

The Museum has collected examples of some of the best animal sculptures of noted French artists Mene and Fratin. Other small ornaments include desk sets, candlesticks, hearth furniture, filigree fruit plates, plaques (the most famous being The Last Supper, based on the painting by Leonardo da Vinci), wall cabinets, jardinières, urns, and small statuary.

There is a collection of over 100 fireplaces and approaching 100 items of furniture, including coat, umbrella and hat stands, benches and chairs. Most were designed by locally trained artists, but others in the collection were made to the designs of Christopher Dresser.

Figurative work is represented by the designs of John Bell. His most famous pieces were made for the Great Exhibition of 1851, a decorative fountain incorporating a life-size boy and swan and a statue of Andromeda. He then went on to design a cast iron table supported by 4 life-size and life-like deerhound dogs, which was exhibited at the 1855 International Exhibition, Paris. The collection is supported by a full range of lavishly illustrated company catalogues and archive.

Collection details

Social History, Science and Technology, Personalities, Land Transport, Decorative and Applied Art, Costume and Textiles, Coins and Medals, Archives, Archaeology

Key artists and exhibits

Decorative metalwork
Designated Collection

Exhibition details are listed below, you may need to scroll down to see them all.

Pit Profiles, Re-Profiled

21 June — 31 December 2013

Pit Profiles: Re-Profiled, an absorbing and thought-provoking exhibition of miners’ portraits and their personal stories, will be on display at the Coalbrookdale Gallery, adjacent to Enginuity in the Ironbridge Gorge, Shropshire. The exhibition will be open Monday to Friday, from Friday, 21 June until Tuesday, 31 December 2013. The collection is made up of evocative contemporary photographs of colliery workers taken by Anton Want along with a selection of drawings of pit workers by H Andrew Freeth, originally published in the 1940s and ‘50s. Free to view, Pit Profile, Re-Profiled will be open Monday – Friday from 10am until 5pm,

People are often surprised to find close links between coal mining and art. When the industry was nationalised in 1947, the National Coal Board (NCB) commissioned artists and began its own collection.

Among the first was Birmingham born H Andrew Freeth (1912–1986) who travelled through the coalfields drawing portraits of working miners. These were published together with the men’s personal stories as ‘Pit Profiles’ in the NCB’s monthly magazine COAL, between 1947 and 1952. Inspired by Freeth, internationally recognised photographer Anton Want created a modern-day ‘Pit Profile’ series at Kellingley Colliery, North Yorkshire. Like the original, his portraits and interviews offer an intimate portrayal of working colliery life but in the twenty-first century.

Between them, these two artists have created an important legacy, which honours one of Britain’s oldest industries and the people who have helped to shape it.