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The Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron is one of ten Ironbridge Gorge Museums administered by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust. The museum is based in the village of Coalbrookdale in the Ironbridge Gorge, in Shropshire, England within a World Heritage Site, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.
Contents
Museum
The museum is normally open to the public every day of the week, although as of December 2016 it is closed for redevelopment until spring 2017.
On display are:
The Old Furnace
The Old Furnace is where Abraham Darby I perfected the smelting of iron with coke instead of charcoal.
In 1959 Allied Ironfounders, successors to the Coalbrookdale Company, had the Old Furnace site excavated to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Darby's first coke smelting. This led to a small Coalbrookdale Museum, which in 1970 became part of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust as the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron.
It is a Grade I listed structure. The Old Furnace was in 2014 the 100th recipient of the Engineering Heritage Award given by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
The Coalbrookdale site is also home to Enginuity, an interactive design and technology centre.