This time we're heading back to when Queen Victoria was on the throne and the British
Empire spanned the world.
If you saw our last video you know we are in Shropshire, England.
Visiting Ironbridge home of the first cast iron bridge in the world.
Blists hill is part of the ironbridge gorge museums.
This open air victorian town lovingly recreates life in the year 1900, so let's head back
in time and meet some of the locals.
The museum grounds sit in a former industrial area, open since 1973.
The buildings were either on site at the time, have been built to resemble examples of period
properties or amazingly moved brick by brick to the museum.
Lloyd's bank is externally an exact example of the Broseley branch just a few miles away.
We visited Broseley in our last episode.
Inside the cashier's counter and all the fittings have been assembled from various banks in
the country or on loan from Lloyd's bank archives.
When there is no global pandemic you can exchange your modern day money for victorian token
coins, like farthings, shillings, sixpence to spend in the shops around the town.
The bank teller will explain how it all works and it's great fun to learn this bygone currency
whether you're young or old and still remember it.
The bicycle as we know it today evolved in the 19th century and became a very popular
mode of transport for victorians.
Little repair shops like this popped up all over the country.
Road quality improved as well and became smoother to cater for the ever-growing number of cyclists.
The grocer would sell much more than just seasonal fruit and veg, stocking many dried
or tin provisions like the all-important tea, bottled condiments and tin fruit maybe even
some meat and fish.
No well-established town would have been without one or two of these types of stores.
AF Blakemores & Sons opened shop in 1917 in Wolverhampton and are still a thriving business
some hundred years on.
This shop is a copy of the original owned by the Owen family in market street Ockengate.
The pharmacy was really important in 1900 as people could generally not afford to go
to the doctor and looked to the pharmacy to help them with remedies, ointments and cures
to aid their ailments.
It was around the time that branded products started to appear and you could pick from
something the pharmacy had mixed or go for a more expensive branded item that you might
trust.
The pharmacy also stocked basic animal medicines, chemicals for photography, they were even
the local opticians selling spectacles and provision has been made in this store for
a travelling dentist to visit once or twice a week.
The New Inn pub was originally situated on the corner of green lane and hospital street
in the burchills area of Walsall.
It was taken down brick by brick in 1981 to 82 and rebuilt on the corner of the main high
street.
Fully licensed you can sit down for a pint inside or in the beer garden and the locals
often put on a musical sing-along throughout the day.{singing} But she was a dear little
dicky bird.
Tweet Tweet!
Now what i was hoping for there was a street full of nightingales, i didn't even get one
old crow did I!
The cobbler would have repaired shoes and leather goods like bags time and time again
for the local victorians.
They would have never dreamed of throwing anything away unless it was completely worn out.
As education improved in the late 1800s and schools became compulsory literacy became
widespread and the post office was the center of this as people sent letters around the world.
Fish and chip shop started around 1860 and became a staple food of the working class.
The rapid development of fishing in the north sea and the railways meant fish could be transported
quickly to populated areas. You can enjoy lunch here cooked in beef fat!
Some areas of the museum are original and were here hundreds of years ago as this was
a working industrial site. The oldest of these is the coal and clay mine, dug in the 1780s
by Michael William Reynolds to extract the raw materials for the local industry. The mine
shaft to take the workmen up and down to the coal seam still works to this day, and a local
victorian will show you how it works and demonstrate the shaft mechanism in action.
{victorian} It would take about two minutes to wind it all the way down.
I mentioned that clay was also extracted from this mine and blists hill took advantage of
this commodity in 1870 and built the tile and brickworks. You can learn more about the
tile industry and the victorians love for decorative tiles in our previous episode when
we visited Jackfield tile museum.
The world's first steam locomotive was built in coalbrookdale in 1802, from the designs
of Richard Trevithick. The original engine is long gone, but a replica is regularly fired
and chugs up and down a short track at various times of the day to show you how it works.
This important engine predates the Stevenson rocket by some 25 years.
To aid in the moving of heavy raw materials away from blists hill to other factories and
works, a canal was built in 1792 and linked up with the hey inclined plane we spoke about
in detail in our last episode. This enabled tub boats to move coal and other materials
to Coalport China or onto the River Severn to other industrial areas. You can walk down the
canal banks and look at the hay incline plane from the top within the blists hill museum.
Blists hill has a vast number of exhibits for you to enjoy during your day at the museum. Whether
it's the butcher or the baker, yes you guessed it and the candlestick maker, there's a huge
amount to see and do.
Live talks like this one by the local farrier about the use of
horses in the town happen throughout the day. So make sure you check the what's on board
at the entrance and make notes of the times.
So this is the doctor's surgery? {victorian} well it is it isn't. This is the Duke of Sutherland's house and I
live in here with my five kids and wife and the local doctor rents a room of us. Rather
than people visiting him at his own house, he he comes to them. So he rents out our parlour
from the back of us, and then once a week the doctor will come and the locals if there are any
minor aliments will come see him there. It was originally built 1862 was lived in up until 1985, a place
called Donnington about three miles from here. We literally took it down brick by brick as you say, all labelled
and brought here. The following year build it here. So this
is one of the the later houses on this site.
There are three blast furnaces at blists hill, built in the 1830s and 40s. They would have
been 15 meters high and in their heyday several hundred workers would have been making pig iron
around the clock seven days a week. They were fully utilized until 1912 when the
steel industry was taking shape and iron was in decline.
The GR Morton Ironworks houses machinery and equipment that was used in the varied processes
of puddling, rolling and shingling to convert pig iron from the blast furnaces into wrought
iron. The building itself came from woolwich dockyards and it's very quiet here today, i'm
not sure if they sometimes run demonstrations.
The blacksmith was an important member of the local community repairing tools making
horseshoes, nails and farming implements. The fire in the forge would have been kept going
all day long. As the need for them died out at the end of the victorian era many turned
to making decorative pieces and now in the 21st century with few around they're sought after.
The techniques and tools used by the blacksmith today has changed very little.
Traveling fairs were very popular in victorian times and the working-class town folk would
find a penny or two to take the family to the amusements and rides.
The advent of steam power allowed for more exciting rides like this chair-o-plane to take
center stage at the fair. You can relive these amusements for a small extra fee at the museum.
If you need a break then forest glen pavilion is a nice cafe on site to grab a bite to eat
or a cup of tea!
When Queen Victoria came to the throne schools were for the rich but this was to change in
1870 with a new law requiring all children to attend school. The buildings were imposing
with high up windows to prevent children from seeing out. In terms of lessons they were basic
but focused on the three R's of reading writing and arithmetic. Discipline was enforced
hard and it wasn't uncommon for children to be beaten by the cane, made from birchwood.
Boys typically on their backside whereas girls would take their punishment on their legs
or hands. A school day was from 9am to 12 noon when children would go home for lunch just
like victorian workman usually did and the afternoon was from 2pm to 5pm. For teachers
the most important equipment was the chalkboard and easel, the mainstay of any lesson for the
children was to copy information from the chalkboard onto the slate board. Paper was
expensive and slate could be wiped clean and used again, so very cost effective. The older
children would begin to write in a book using a dip pen and black ink from an inkwell.
There were designated ink monitors whose job it was to fill the ink wells each and every morning.
A victorian funicular, sadly closed due to covid can whisk you from the upper
and lower levels of the museum. The clay mine railway was also shut during our visit you
can normally take the mine train underground and learn about life from working conditions
of a miner.
This squatter's cottage, made of stone, only one storey high and with the privy or toilet outside
would have been the home of up to nine people at one time. It gets its name because people
who built it and lived in it squatted on land they didn't actually own. Instead they paid
an annual rent to the landowner called a fine. This cottage was moved to the museum in the
1970s. Inside you can see there's very little space to store anything it would have been
extremely cramped and a miserable life but at least they had a roof over their heads.
As we head back into town there is still more to see and keep you occupied throughout your
time at blists hill. You will need at least half a day here, if not the whole day to enjoy
it. Visit ironbridge.org uk for the latest pricing and opening information. Help us grow
our channel by subscribing to future videos and follow us on social media. Our website
memoryseekers.net has many videos from around the world and lots of information, it's updated
regularly. Sadly we've reached the end of our tour and the visit to all 10 museums at Ironbridge.
Make sure you check out our other two videos covering the rest. End your visit with a look
around the gift shop or a stop at the railway cafe.
We hope you have a great day out, thanks for watching, bye!