Come to Ironbridge Gorge, the ‘birthplace of climate change’

‘It’s an evocative phrase, and one we’re thinking through, [but] if we use [it] we need to follow it up with action’

IRONBRIDGE Gorge is best known as the “birthplace of the industrial revolution”. But the Unesco World Heritage Site is also considering adopting the moniker “birthplace of climate change”.

The head of the site’s 10 museums, on the edge of Telford, Shropshire, says he wants to teach visitors about Britain’s role in global warming and showcase the district as an example for transitioning to clean manufacturing.

Ironbridge “was the Silicon Valley of its day”, said Nick Ralls, the chief executive of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, and helped make Britain the leading economic power of its age.

“The other side of that same coin is that the iron smelting experiments happening in the gorge really signalled the beginning of pollution. It was those early beginnings that lead… to pollution that’s still happening today.”

The museums are updating displays with descriptions of how the innovations pioneered in the area led to the modern economy and climate change.

That includes considering using the phrase “birthplace of climate change”. He added: “It’s an evocative phrase to use and one which we’re thinking through carefully [but] if we use [it] we need to follow it up with action.”

The museums will also look to incorporate the legacy of the Cop26 climate summit into their exhibits.

The trust is among a number of industrial heritage institutions confronting changing attitudes to Britain’s history of heavy industry and pollution.

The National Mining Museum of Scotland and the Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life are among those putting on events for Cop26, which is being held in Glasgow next month.

Mr Ralls said Telford and the Ironbridge Gorge area showed how industrial areas could move with the times. “The gorge itself and Telford is a good example of a success story of how a district has reinvented itself. It was attached to all these old polluting processes and it’s moved on and is at the cutting edge of technology and industrial development.”

Telford is now home to AceOn, a battery technology and energy storage company, while high-tech future trains are being tested in the area.

Ironbridge’s industrial heritage began in the first decade of the 18th century when the experiments of Abraham Darby in Coalbrookdale led him to develop the method of smelting iron using coking coal.

Ironbridge takes its name from the world’s first major bridge to be made from cast iron, which was built in 1781.

The region, formerly known as the Severn Gorge, became an industrial hub with its unique geography enabling not just coal mining and iron forging, but clay, porcelain and tile production.

That also made it one of the first areas to succumb to heavy pollution.