The Ironbridge Gorge, a cradle of the Industrial Revolution, in the late
18th century was a magnet for writers, artists and industrial spies. The
latest wonders of engineering and metallurgical technology were to be
seen in a spectacular natural setting, where the fast-flowing Severn
passed between towering cliffs of limestone, and hillsides honeycombed
with mine workings amid the smoke of furnaces and the clanking of
engines.Barrie Trinder, the acknowledged authority on the subject, has
selected the most interesting descriptions and pictures to provide an
invaluable anthology, through contemporary evidence, of the place and
the people in that pioneering period, when this corner of Shropshire was
changing the world and was indeed, as Charles Hulbert described it in
1837, 'the most extraordinary district in the world'.This book has
become essential reading for anyone with an interest in the history of
this fascinating area, or in the Industrial Revolution in general. It
brings new understanding of the gorge itself and the industrial
monuments preserved there and new insights for the specialist historian,
whether concerned with social conditions, popular religion or industrial
technology.This edition will continue to serve the same main groups of
readers - local historians, educational groups and specialist
historians - and, most of all, those general readers who know the area
and recognise that something strange and seminal happened there that
transformed not only Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale but the whole of our
civilisation. The activity that once made the gorge so extraordinary has
spread and grown to become a commonplace in modern industrial societies,
leaving the place where it began a monument and a museum.
