The Ironbridge Gorge

The Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage property covers an area of 5.5 km2 (550ha) and is located in Telford, Shropshire, approximately 50km north-west of Birmingham. The Industrial Revolution had its 18th-century [blank] in the Ironbridge Gorge before spreading across the world, bringing with it some of the most far-reaching changes in human history. The site incorporates a 5km length of the steep-sided, mineral-rich Severn Valley from a point immediately west of Ironbridge downstream to Coalport, together with two smaller river valleys extending northwards to Coalbrookdale and Madeley. The Ironbridge Gorge offers a powerful [blank] of the origins of the Industrial Revolution and also contains extensive remains of that period when the area was the focus of international attention from artists, engineers, and writers.The site contains substantial remains of mines, foundries, factories, workshops, warehouses, ironmasters' and workers' housing, public buildings, infrastructure, and transport systems, together [blank] the traditional landscape and forests of the Severn Gorge. In addition, there also remain [blank] collections of artefacts and archives relating to the individuals, processes, and products that made the area so important. Today, the site is a living working community with a population of approximately 4000 people. It is also a [blank] landscape that is interpreted and made accessible through the work of a number of organizations, in particular, the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust established in 1967 to preserve and interpret the remains of the Industrial Revolution within the Ironbridge Gorge) and the Severn Gorge Countryside Trust established in 1991 to manage the woodland and grassland in the Gorge.