[BITList] Ironbridge Renovation

[michael J Feltham]

Inside the mammoth restoration of the Iron Bridge, one of the most famous relics of the Industrial Revolution
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The restored Iron Bridge
 Harry Mount <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/harry-mount/> 
29 DECEMBER 2018 • 6:30AM
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Today, Ironbridge looks like a picture-postcard village, its handsome Georgian and Victorian houses tumbling past hanging woods down to the swirling waters of the river Severn.

But 230 years ago this corner of rural Shropshire presented a Satanic, industrial scene, the hillsides aflame with iron furnaces, smoke belching into the skies, the river black with soot.

And there at the centre of the village, arching over the Severn, is the structure that, more than any other, signifies the Industrial Revolution. 

The Iron Bridge gave its name to the surrounding settlement, and was the first cast iron bridge in the world, built by Abraham Darby III in 1779. It was also the first free-standing iron structure, the forefather of every skyscraper on the planet.

Now the Grade I listed structure looks just as good as it did in 1779, thanks to a £3.6 million, 15-month-long restoration by English Heritage. It is the single biggest conservation project since it became a charity in 2015, and it cares for more than 400 sites across the country. 


The restored Iron Bridge
The programme was part-funded by a donation of €1 million (£900,000) from a German foundation, and it was also English Heritage’s first-ever crowdfunding appeal, raising £47,545 in 30 days from more than 900 donors. 

The bridge had been in a perilous state, cracking due to stresses in the ironwork dating from the original construction, ground movement over the centuries, and an earthquake at the end of the 19th century. 

English Heritage has now conserved and cleaned the iron radials and braces holding the bridge together, the deck plates and wedges, the main iron arch, and the stone abutments either side of the Severn. 


The restored Iron Bridge
And, thanks to the discovery of samples of the original red-brown, lead-based oil paint, the bridge has been restored to that colour, having been painted its familiar gunmetal grey in recent decades. 

How splendidly the colour of the bridge now stand out against the grey trunks of the winter-stripped trees and the green Severn waters. In the flesh, the bridge looks surprisingly small, spanning the river far from its mammoth estuary, at 100ft across. Still it is a thing of wonder, with its pleasingly steep camber and its lissom elegance. 

It must have looked extraordinary – as light as air – in 1779, with its soaring, slim ribs, compared with the heavy, solid stone and timber bridges that predated for an eternity. That was exactly what Darby III intended the bridge as – a dazzling showpiece, to show off to the world what fantastic creations he could make with cast iron. 


The restored Iron Bridge
It was his grandfather, also named Abraham Darby, who pioneered the smelting of iron using coke, as opposed to much less efficient charcoal. Darby III perfected the process at the family’s Old Furnace in nearby Coalbrookdale and just by the Severn at Bedlam Furnaces. The Iron Bridge itself was made out of iron from these furnaces. 

“By producing coke in a commercially viable way, this was the spark that kick-started the Industrial Revolution,” says Matt Thompson, the head collections curator at English Heritage.

This bucolic corner of Shropshire was naturally blessed with all the raw materials needed to produce iron: coal, limestone, iron oxide and water power, produced by the steep-sided slopes of Coalbrookdale, to work the furnace bellows.

With all these natural forces in place, the Darbys poured out iron products. It wasn’t just the bridge, but their bread-and-butter item: huge cooking pots. Coalbrookdale also made the first cast iron steam engine cylinders, the first iron railway wheels, the first cast iron rails and the first steam railway ­locomotive.


The restored Iron Bridge
It’s no exaggeration to say that the Darbys powered the world, as they exported their products everywhere. And the world came in turn to gawp at the Iron Bridge. Soon after it was built, the Tontine Hotel was erected at one end of the bridge and remains there today. Two young French aristocrats, François and Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld, came as tourists in 1785, lunching in the new Tontine Hotel, which they described as “scrupulously clean and very good”. Still today, tourists flock to this crucible of the Industrial Revolution. 

When Darby opened the bridge, he charged a toll. The tollhouse survives today, as does the old list of prices: two shillings for a carriage drawn by six horses; a ha’penny for pedestrians or for a calf, pig, sheep or lamb. 

The Darbys were Quakers, and didn’t believe in deferring to the great and the good. Thus the postscript on the toll sign: “This bridge being private property, every officer or soldier, whether on duty or not, is liable to pay toll for passing over, as well as any baggage waggon, mail coach or the Royal family.”

These days, English Heritage doesn’t charge anything – whether you’re the Queen, a calf or a baggage waggon – to cross one of the most important bridges in human history.

The restored Iron Bridge in Ironbridge, Shropshire, is open during daylight hours

Related TopicsEnglish Heritage
 <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/english-heritage/> History
 <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/> Shropshire
 <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/shropshire/> Period property
 <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/property-period-heritage-listed/>
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