Visitors can try their hand at traditional jobs at Blists Hill's Mop Fair this weekend

This May bank holiday weekend, Blists Hill Victorian Town will be hosting a traditional 'mop fair' - a chance for visitors to learn about traditional jobs and even try their hand at some of them.

During the Victorian period, it was common for towns to host mop fairs, where workers would be matched with potential employers based on their skillset.

This weekend, visitors will get a flavour of the types of jobs that were available to people living in the East Shropshire Coalfield in the 19th century.

There will be hands-on blacksmithing, printing and candle-dipping activities, opportunities to make bricks, rag-wreaths or traditional clay pipes, and demonstrations of stone masonry.

At midday each day the town’s mayor will also host a parade and invite the town’s residents and visitors alike to wave off the 'Shroppies', or Shropshire pit girls, as they leave the East Shropshire Coalfield to spend the summer months working in London during the fruit and vegetable harvesting season.

Lauren Collier, head of interpretation at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, said: “The Shroppies were teenagers and young women who worked at local mines, doing jobs such as picking ironstone nodules out of the clay on pit banks and transporting them to wagons.

"It was a low-paid, physically demanding and sometimes dangerous job. But from May to September some of them would be lucky enough to relocate to the fields surrounding London for the fruit and vegetable season, where they would weed vegetable gardens and carry fruit and vegetables into London’s markets for sale.

"While this summer work could be gruelling it was better paid. The town would get together to wish them well. Visitors this weekend will get a flavour of what this annual send-off was like.”

Research carried out by curators at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, a heritage conservation and education charity, has revealed that two daughters in the Corbett family, who lived in the Squatter’s Cottage, now at Blists Hill Victorian Town but formerly at Burrough’s Bank, worked as pit girls in the 1860s.

The events are included in the entry price. More information is available online at: ironbridge.org.uk