At the cutting edge of world history and industrial progress back when it was built in 1799, but now Ironbridge and nearby Coalbrookdale are bucolic backwaters where you struggle to get a decent phone signal.
by Chris Bertram on March 16, 2025
At the cutting edge of world history and industrial progress back when it was built in 1799, but now Ironbridge and nearby Coalbrookdale are bucolic backwaters where you struggle to get a decent phone signal.
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Alan White 03.16.25 at 7:12 pm
Still an elegant design. Great photo of it.
Laban 03.16.25 at 7:14 pm
There’s an excellent early 1970s book, Remains Of A Revolution by Anthony Burton, which looks at what evidence still remains of our early industrial history, and Ironbridge features prominently in the early chapters. The rebuilt 1638 furnace which produced the iron is still near the bridge, on the east side of the valley and dated 1777.
“Darby, perhaps because he had no precedents to follow, treated the iron sections as if they were wood. So we find them fitted together in a series of mortice and dovetail joints, and where one member passes through another, the joints are made solid with iron wedges.”
And it still functions after more than 200 years, you can drive a car over it and visit one of the many pleasant hillside hostelries.