Shropshire Magazine

Coalport China Museum

Shirley Tart continues her exploration of the Ironbridge Gorge’s heritage with a visit to Coalport China Museum, a fascinating exposé of times gone by.

It stands today quiet and serene on its sprawling riverside site. Cleaned and restored kilns make novel exhibition halls for richly coloured and priceless pieces behind safety glass. Outbuildings are workshops for old skills and other areas of activity, while wonderful names from the past are preserved here with a straight face – like the saggar maker’s workshop, for instance. Indeed you can on occasion even see the saggar maker’s bottom knocker in action!

Once the dirty, noisy, thriving Coalport China Factory belching smoke into the historic valley, and now the Coalport Museum complex, this was one of the biggest industrial sites of its kind in the world. And, in its time, it produced some of the most coveted porcelain for the tables and dressers of the famous and wealthy, at home and abroad.

As is the nature of these things, during the last century modest workers’ cottages around this part of east Shropshire would have shelves and cupboards full of this priceless stuff, some safely put away – or at any rate brought out only on special occasions – the rest used daily.

Traditional skills are still on display at the museum.

It was owned by those who had worked at the factory, or whose parents had, and they’d been given either seconds or stray pieces. Years ago one old lady told me that when she was a girl working at Coalport, they would scour the surrounding tips at the end of a day and often come up with a china treasure!

And talking of women, those at Coalport had their own fascinating story to tell. The great industries spawned down here alongside the river were woven through the lives of pretty well everyone in the area, from ironmasters to coal miners, artists, painters and foundry workers – and not just the men, but also their women and children.

Both women and young girls were employed at the Coalport China Works from its beginning in the late 18th century until the works closed in 1926. Girls as young as 13 started work as apprentices but sometimes moved on when they married or found other employment. But some did indeed work at Coalport for all of their lives.

So as well as showing off its breathtakingly beautiful china from down the ages, through its artefacts and photographs and historical information, today’s Coalport Museum also tells the story of yesterday’s family life and the hard graft of surviving.

How such beauty was created despite so many daily struggles stands testament not just to the vision of William Reynolds, who pretty much established Coalport, and the brilliant managers and designers who ensured immense business success, but to those often callused yet oh-so-careful hands of the unheralded men and women who made it.

In the glory days, porcelain was easily the most successful of the new industries which grew up around Coalport. For more than a century, the amazing set of workings down by the river was one of the biggest of its kind, not just in Britain nor even in Europe, but in the world.

A worthy contender for the title of biggest would surely have been the very birthplace of porcelain – China itself. Today, the Coalport Museum reminds us that nearly all the porcelain for the European trade came from Chung Te Chen. The industry was first developed there because of the plentiful supplies of china clay (kaolin). At one point in the 18th century, that relatively small area was said to have had more than 3,000 kilns and a population of over a million!

This little slice of Shropshire was having its china-making heyday as well then – albeit not on such a grand scale. But the quality of its products was always exquisite and is still valued today.

The William of Broseley moored up opposite Coalport China Works, c1890. The craft was apparently the last Shropshire trading barge.

We ought never to forget, however, that it came at a price. As social history records, grave lung conditions and deadly lead poisoning were common calls to an all-too-early grave. The latter condition came directly from the dust generated by some of those beautiful colours which made a plate a work of art but posed such a risk to human life.

Such was the risk and danger of those early industrial days in which our forefathers laboured all too hard and for all too short a time. Yet some masters did their best to improve conditions over the years and undoubtedly there was that wonderful camaraderie which comes from people living, working and pulling together. This place was no exception.

And the Coalport Works was a fantastic success story from a business point of view. But early last century, with the decline of the previously flourishing American market and the 1920–21 slump, the company suffered heavy financial losses. They were also faced over the next few years with a depressed home market, and in 1925 sold out to Cauldon Potteries at Stoke-on-Trent.

The following year of 1926, also the year of a crippling general strike, the works and its production closed. Coalport in Shropshire had come to an end.

After a chequered mid-century career for Coalport China, in 1967 it became part of the Wedgwood Group, and under that umbrella it continues to flourish today.

As does its fascinating story – thanks to the living museum on the site, using the very buildings from where the famous china was first made.

Set around kiln and courtyard, outbuildings offer workshops with craftsmen and -women demonstrating those old skills and the saggar maker often on duty. Want to know what a saggar maker’s bottom knocker is? You’ll find out at Coalport Museum so I’ll not spoil it for you!

During most school holidays the creative workshops will let you have a go on a range of ceramic techniques, maybe decorate a mug or plate, or even try a little clay sculpting.

An example of fine tableware created at Coalport.

They have also gone to great lengths here not only to welcome but also to include children. The Children’s Gallery is like a wonderful play den with its own terracotta-coloured kiln, information about how china was cooked in little boxes called saggars, dressing up, puzzles and even comfy curl-up sofas which doubtless often tempt grown-ups to flop down as well.

There is, however, another sobering reminder of the hard life it all once was – photographic murals in that faded print of the day, showing children younger than many of today’s youthful visitors, and hard at work for many long hours in the factory.

Apart from the fabulous china displays which are rightly the museum’s pride, special exhibitions also ensure that there is generally something new to admire and study, however frequently you visit. For instance, this year has seen the Thomas Telford Colossus of Roads exhibition marking the great engineer’s 250th anniversary, while the bright and colourful Fashionable Teapot display featuring early Coalport teaware has just finished.

The Caughley Gallery is a visitor must, marking the contribution made at Caughley near Broseley in the 1770s when Ambrose Gallimore and Thomas Turner were producing some of the finest soft-paste porcelain to be made during the 18th century. The factory had a short life but its products are still found in a number of fine collections.

Photographic records of old Coalport ferry boats, the first bus to collect workers, and the many early photographs of painters and paintresses, glaze dippers and warehouse staff, are invaluable in the story of Coalport and its people.

The Prince of Wales is a fan of this part of the world and admitted being fascinated when on a visit a few years ago, while few of the many thousands of annual visitors leave without having marvelled at how Coalport’s past forged a trail across the world.

The road to reach here is in parts still not much more than a narrow pathway, but a winding trek puts no one off. Alongside the museum complex, restored and renewed buildings now includes unique and much coveted homes at this spot which could fairly boast an originality of its own.

The Coalport China Works may have given way to the Coalport Museum but you can very easily think down here that the friendly ghosts of the past are never far away.

• In December, I’ll be looking at the Christmas celebrations at the Blists Hill open-air Victorian Museum.