Shropshire Magazine

A reminder of a well known and much respected county retailer: McClure’s.

Shirley Tart takes a wander down memory lane at an updated Blists Hill

Watching Blists Hill turn from an overgrown site with a few brick- and iron workings, to an authentic Victorian town, has been absolutely fascinating. For those of us who remember it as just a mini wilderness on the back road between Madeley and Coalport, especially so.

Which is why every time I visit, I’m like a kid in a sweet shop - always something new (or old) to see, another memory stirred, a ‘fancy that’ bit of information that even I’d not heard before and regularly, another shop or business, often the real deal from a century-and-a-half ago.

My most recent stroll into yesteryear revealed a whole lot more than that.

The incline lift.

A massive £12 million development includes the new Canal Street - and again, for every ‘new’ you can almost always read ‘old’ - lined with a spectacular parade of shops including a post office, sweetshop, photographer’s emporium and the yummy fried-fish merchant. But most evocative of all for many of us will be the drapers and outfitters which is a facsimile of the McClure’s stores which flourished in Wellington and Shrewsbury - the Shrewsbury end only changed hands in the last few years.

We remember with affection Kennedy McClure (also a great and successful Shrewsbury Flower Show exhibitor) and his family and loyal staff who ran the businesses. And it is wonderful to see McClure’s back in a town centre again - a view shared by Councillor Miles Hosken, who went on to run his own successful menswear business in Wellington but who started his career at McClure’s.

And all these years on, for old times’ sake, of course Miles had to have a snap taken outside the Canal Street store at Blists Hill.

For locals, it is stories and memories like these which bring places such as Blists Hill alive. Not that there is anywhere else in our lovely part of the world remotely like this Victorian town, kitted out with homes and other buildings, often dismantled and carried wholesale from their original sites in the county. And what this massive and so impressive renovation has achieved is tremendous.

Bedlam

The experience begins as you enter the new visitor centre which may have state-of-the-art audiovisual facilities but which transports you back in time to the bedlam and hard times during the evolution of the mining and hot-metal industries, and underlines the importance of Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale and the rest of east Shropshire.

Nine projectors flashing evocative images onto nine-metre-high walls, painting the warts-and-all picture of a harsh life for men, women and, very often, for children as well.

I found myself surprisingly moved by this assault on the senses. My dad worked in the steel industry for most of his life and the opening to the Blists Hill story really hit home with a reminder of how hard, hot and deafening the work could be.

And suddenly a little ‘dad cameo’ came back to me as well. To these tough men who worked long hours to fashion so much of our world in hot metal, their breaks from the heat, dust and noise were essential. Great mugs of strong tea rehydrated, cleared throats and chests and lubricated tubes ready for the next session. Mugs did I say? Not for my dad, he hated them. Home or away, he insisted on a china cup and saucer.

As I watched the striking images of other men of iron and steel, I did wonder how they would have voted in the great mug-or-cup debate!

And this was only the beginning. After the visitor centre and extended, beautifully equipped shop, head through the town gates, as it were, past the bank and the pub (waiting for the horse-drawn cart to pass) then turn left into Canal Street. After ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ and admiring, you’ll be wanting an authentic taste of your trip into the past. Then a cone of fish and chips from the fried-fish dealer is the obvious choice - as an escape from low-fat and unsaturated spreads, they are cooked in good old-fashioned lard!

Homage

Nearby, the new Artisans’ Corner boasts plumber, tinsmith and decorative plasterer. The Incline Lift pays homage to the historic incline lifts which once hauled goods up and down the sides of the Severn Gorge. This one takes visitors between the top of the recreated Victorian town down a steep slope to The Green below. Apart from anything else, it offers spectacular views across the Gorge and this wonderful World Heritage Site. In sobering contrast, the Clay Mine Railway takes visitors on a short journey into a blacked out ‘clay-mine’ where a fantastic audiovisual show tells the story of a father-and-son team of clay miners. The railway costs extra but is well worth it.

As you leave the open-air museum, a giant interactive and three-dimensional map tells more of the Gorge story and you can look over a balcony with flywheels, boilers and other large-scale reminders of the industrial past.

The mining experience.

Since the official opening of the new developments, the British Postal Museum and Archive in association with Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, has opened a replica working Victorian Post Office. And perhaps one of the most surprising and encouraging aspects of this massive extra development at Blists Hill, is that all the money was funded by Advantage West Midlands (a bumper £8 million of it) with the balance coming from the European Regional Development Fund.

Happily, despite the recession, chief executive Steve Miller can already report on an excellent 2009 for Ironbridge Gorge Museums. He says: “It is proving an amazing year with the combination of our anniversary celebrations and the excitement surrounding these new developments. We have managed to grow visitor numbers by 20 per cent across the 10 museums and 30 per cent at Blists Hill Victorian Town.”

And that’s before the latest attractions were unveiled.

The atmosphere hereabouts nowadays is so authentic, that it’s almost a cultural shock to leave Blists Hill and return to the 21st century. Except that not being able to find my car keys (temporarily) was a reminder of how we rely on modern machinery to even live in this present day. So for the moment, farewell to the past but I, for one, will definitely be back.