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The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust is an independent Educational Charity founded in 1967. It operates ten main museums over two miles of the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site, as well as the Ironbridge Institute (in a joint venture with the University of Birmingham). Its collections are Nationally Designated and it is now a founder member of the West Midlands Hub of museums charged with extending the range and importance of the role of museums in the region’s cultural life.
A central plank of Museum strategy is to complete the task of rescuing the heritage of the Gorge. As the largest independent Museum in the country, attracting 300,000 visitors per year, it is vital for the Museum’s future to find commercially viable re-uses for decaying historic buildings, as well as scope for growth and development to protect its business into the future.
The former Craven Dunnill Tile Works at Jackfield is the only historic industrial complex remaining at risk within the World Heritage Site (the old Coalbrookdale Company buildings having recently been restored). It is a unique survival of a purpose-built Victorian decorative tile factory, much of it Listed Grade II*.
The site has been successfully developed as a Museum over the last decade and occupies a central place in the Museum’s strategy to interpret the cycles of industry in the Gorge by bringing entire factories back to life with collections, manufacture, demonstration and teaching. However, to survive and prosper, the whole complex of buildings must be restored.
The completion of work to restore the factory and provide income for its long-term maintenance is a plank in three key strategies - the Regional Development Plan, the Severn Valley Regeneration Plan and the World Heritage Site Management Plan.
The establishment of a teaching Conservation Centre at Jackfield supports the emerging regional philosophy of Cluster Opportunity Groups, bringing together building conservation skills as well as architectural ceramics technology with practitioners, teachers and trainers. It will create facilities for granting wider access to its national collections, and it will permit the successful Ironbridge Institute to expand its teaching and make effective and commercial use of the conservation skills available within the Museum and its population of tenants.
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