We’ve just got back from spending a month in the UK with my parents. For once, I didn’t move around a lot so I got to take my children to all the places we used to go to when we were little. We visited Cosford, Shrewsbury and some of the Ironbridge Gorge museums and we also went to Airea51 with my best friend from primary school to do trampolining, which our daughters loved.
As I’m sure you all know already, Telford, and Ironbridge in particular, bills itself as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, so all of the Ironbridge Gorge museums have an industrial bent. Even if you’re not interested in how the iron production process was transformed in the 18th century (though I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t be…), I recommend visiting Ironbridge. It’s a lovely town (confirmed by my in-laws who come from one of the most beautiful villages in Provence) and Blists Hill Victorian Town is fascinating for all ages.
For Christmas, I’d asked my mum to buy my husband and me passports to the Ironbridge museums that give you unlimited entry to all ten of the museums for a year, so we made the most of them! They are really good value anyway, but they often have cheap deals on Travelzoo so keep an eye out if you’re planning a visit. We went to Blists Hill Victorian Town three times, Jackfield Tile Museum and Enginuity.
Enginuity is a sort of science museum with a focus on engineering, although they have a new exhibit about the senses that’s just opened which was really interesting. It was a bit old for my two-year old; I think seven- or eight-year olds would probably enjoy it the most. Having said that, she still had a good time. Her favourite part was the water area that demonstrates the hydrological cycle and how dams work, but she also enjoyed turning kinetic energy into electricity and doing some jigsaw puzzles. There’s a soft play area for the 6-and-unders but she was the only one there so it wasn’t much fun. (My daughter goes to soft play for the social interaction more than anything else.)
We went to Jackfield Tile Museum because they had a tile painting workshop open for half-term. My daughter decorated a pre-drawn tile because using the clay to draw on the tile requires strength and precision – not things that two-year olds have in buckets. There were loads of designs to choose from, including the omnipresent unicorn, but she went for a fish. She had a lovely time painting the glazes on to the fish with some help from my mum and me and then she decided that I should draw a cat for the baby, and directed which colours should go where. Our tiles were quite large and cost £8.50 each. Smaller ones and different shapes are available too. They even have teapot stands, so I might have a crack at one of those next time. My parents are going to collect the tiles sometime this week so we’ll see how well they turned out!
My daughter’s favourite museum, though, (and mine, and my parents’) is Blists Hill Victorian Town. It was always fantastic but it’s got even bigger and better since I went as a little girl. It’s a living museum (like Beamish near Durham or the Black Country Museum), which means it’s a town populated by extremely knowledgeable volunteers in Victorian costume.
There’s a bank where you can change your real money for ha’pennies, bobs, threpenny bits, farthings, etc, and then you can spend that money in the shops around the town (although they also take modern money). You can spend your money at the chip shop, the bakers, the drapers, the sweet shop, the pub, the grocers, the fairground with swingboats and a merry-go-round, the post office, the photographer…
And then there are other buildings like the doctor’s surgery, the estate office (which shows where all of the buildings were originally before being relocated to the museum site), the school – where you can join in a lesson with a proper scary schoolmaster, the chandler’s, the squatters’ cottage, the toll house, the carpenter’s, the print shop. For those interested in the Industrial Revolution there is a tonne to see, including the ironworks, mines, steam engines and a Trevithick engine. You could definitely spend all day here. We’ve never got bored. There’s so much to see and do. If you go, make sure you ask questions! The volunteers know so, so much and will gladly talk to you for hours. I’m pretty sure visiting Blists Hill as a child is what made me end up doing a degree in history.
Of course, my two-year old is a bit little to be interested in any of that, really, but what she isn’t too young to appreciate is the farm animals. There are carthorses that give omnibus rides and have saddling demonstrations, there are chickens who will come and talk to you if you pass by and there are a couple of very friendly pigs. My daughter could not get enough. We had several tantrums when it was time to move on, which we all know is the highest form of toddler praise.
If you go at half-term or weekends, there are more volunteers around and extra events. When we visited on half-term weekend it was Queen Victoria’s 200th birthday so there was loads to do, including a treasure hunt that my two-year old loved and a Punch and Judy show. We didn’t go on any of the tours this time but if you want a bit more information, particularly about the industrial areas, they’re brilliant.
The Mulberry Bush 