From Sunday to Wednesday we’ve been on holiday in Ironbridge with our friends Dominique and Lucia! On the first day we went to the Black Country Living Museum, an old Industrial Revolution-age village now converted into an open air living museum. People were wandering around wearing traditional outfits from the period and acting like they were really middle-class pre-Victorian villagers.
We went in all the different little shops, including the bakery (where I bought a delicious huge Viennese whirl!) and a kind of co-op store/grocer’s with everything you could possibly need in it! The “shopkeeper” was telling us some really interesting facts. Apparently, middle-class men would generally look for a woman with a false set of teeth, so that he wouldn’t have to deal with financial problems if his wife needed dental care (which she probably would, considering the general diet in those days wasn’t particularly healthy!).
When we’d finished at the museum, we went to our youth hostel, YHA Coalport. It’s a really nice place and we had a big spacious room with an en suite and five single beds (two bunk beds). Our room is on the top floor, which was bad because we often had to climb up four flights of stairs to get to it, but good because it meant we couldn’t hear anyone being noisy on the first floor (our floor was mainly uninhabited).
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On Monday, we went to Blists Hill Victorian Town, a place similar to the Black Country Living Museum but (in my opinion) even better! We purchased freshly baked, warm, pillowy white bread at the bakery and Tilly and I got some pear drops at the confectioner’s. We had some really interesting conversations with the shopkeepers about the history of Blists Hill and what it would have been like had you been living there in Victorian times. I liked talking to the lady behind the counter in the dressmakers. This shop had a large notice-board at one end, on which were pinned lots of little notes saying things like, ‘WANTED: CAPABLE UNMARRIED WOMAN AGED AROUND 25, SUITED TO HARD WORK AND UNAFRAID OF COWS. MRS MUGGINS, TELFORD, SHROPSHIRE.’
In the afternoon we went to the Jackfield Tile Museum, an informative gallery where recently made or delicate antique tiles lined the walls. I learnt that Victorian fireplaces often had decorative tiles surrounding them, lots of which where made at the tile museum. Many of the tiles had symbolic or traditional scenes depicted on them, like ones from books like Aesops’ Fables or religious texts like the Bible.
When we had finished at the museum, we went to the famous Iron Bridge, which Abraham Darby III erected in 1779. A massive engineering feat at the time and even now, it was made wholly out of cast iron.
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The next day, we visited a few of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums, namely Enginuity, the Museum of Iron, and the Darby houses. Enginuity is a super fun, interactive and informative design and technology museum in Telford. The actual building is quite small but there are loads of mini “exhibitions”. For example, there’s one where you have to stand on a little plastic platform which is lifted off the ground. You have to balance for as long as you can on that platform without touching the ground with either your left foot or your right. It sounds super easy, but it’s actually really difficult. I did it for 6.1 seconds, which was for longer than anyone else could (and on my first try it was 1.2 seconds… shh!).
The Museum of Iron was a really informative and educational museum all about “the Abraham Darbys” (Abraham Darby I, II, III, and IV, but mainly the III!), and their astonishing feats in engineering. The Darby Houses comprise Dale House and Rosehill, two properties built for the Darby generation. Dale House was built in 1717 for Abraham Darby I. Rosehill was built in the late 1730s for Richard Ford, who had married one of Abraham Darby I’s daughters, Mary.
We went back to YHA Coalport earlier than usual—we were there at about half past two—and spent the rest of the day playing in the massive youth hostel. At nine p.m. (when we were all supposed to be in bed…) our other friends Grace, Eve, and Anne came to stay for the final night with us! We had a mini disco and some hot chocolate (it was the last night after all!) and then finally were in bed with the lights out at half past ten!
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On Wednesday, the last day of our holiday, we went back to Blists Hill, this time with our friends and for the whole day. We got there when it opened at ten and left when it closed at four! First of all we got checked in and then went to the bank to exchange our modern-day money with fake Victorian money (Tilly and I had some left over from the last time we visited earlier this year, so we didn’t need to exchange anymore). Then we had a look in the chemist, the grocer’s, the dressmaker’s again, and then went to the confectioner’s and the bakery. Tilly and I decided to get shortbread and biscuits from the bakery instead of sweets from the confectioner’s.
Ruth (Gracie’s, Eve’s and Annie’s mum) and Mummy went off and had coffee and a chat while us seven went around by ourselves. We watched a horse being harnessed (a great big adorable bay called George), and the constable (hilarious “Victorian” policeman) and some other man singing hilarious songs in the inn. One of them had lyrics which were similar to this (I can’t remember the exact ones):
It’s good that fences are put around gardens
Yes, we agree on that
And that walls are built round rooms
Yes, that’s understandable
But why, O, why, I’ve never quite figured
Why, O, why
Why, O, why
Why, O, why
Why, O, why are there fences round graveyards?
No one wants to go in
And no one wants to go out!
After a quick look round the gift shop while Ruth struggled with flat tyres, we drove the journey home, which proved to be two hours and forty minutes long (even though the journey there was a one hour and fifty minutes!). Everyone enjoyed themselves—overall it was a super duper fun holiday!