IRONBRIDGE

Here in the wooden gorge of the Severn River, the industrial Revolution was born in 1709 when Abraham Darby discovered that by smelting iron ore with coke instead of charcoal, iron could be mass-produced. The world's first iron bridge (1779)is just one of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum's sights, which are spread over six square miles; buses run between sites in the summer months. In the western part of the gorge, near the bridge, is the Museum of the River, in a warehouse built to store the Coalbrookdale Company's iron products. Darby's actual furnace is on show at the Museum of Iron, which explains the history of iron-making and of the Coalbrookdale Company.

The iron bridge at Coalbrookdale is surprisingly elegant and delicate-looking, and was the first bridge in the world to be constructed of iron

Received from Thomas Goatherd