50 glorious years for volunteers who helped museum triumph
A group of volunteers which has played a vital role in the success of the award-winning Ironbridge Gorge Museum is celebrating its golden jubilee with a number of events including a big birthday bash in May.
The Friends of Ironbridge Gorge Museum has over its 50 years supported the museum through such things as providing volunteer staff and demonstrators, as well as raising the money to pay for some key projects and acquisitions.
"By 2019 the total value of this support has exceeded £1,100,000, an astonishing achievement, for which we owe our thanks to our loyal members. The £1 million mark was reached in 2016, the year we were awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service," said Geraldine King, programme secretary of the group.
The anniversary is being celebrated with an event for invited guests at Enginuity, Coalbrookdale, on May 2.
Talk
After canapes and drinks there will be an illustrated talk by Sir Neil Cossons, President of the Friends, who as a former director of the museum took the helm as the early dream of creating an industrial museum in the Ironbridge Gorge became a triumphant reality.
The Ironbridge Gorge Museum was established formally in July 1967, but in February of that year a consultation meeting resulted in an advisory group of local people expressing interest in the embryonic museum, and out of that group emerged the Friends.
This steering committee of volunteers first met in June 1969, though they were not formally established until their first annual meeting which was held on February 4, 1970.
After its late 1960s beginnings, the museum project took off in the 1970s and in 1972 all voluntary activities associated with the museum became managed by the Friends, and specialist volunteer groups were set up.
Blists Hill open air museum was opened in 1973, and the Friends’ staffing group manned the entrance at weekends, moving on later to be demonstrators in the Toll House, Squatter Cottage and other exhibits.
Volunteers
Friends volunteers took on a wide range of roles across the museum, including taking guided tours for visitors, as well as giving hands-on help, such as excavating the canal to get the Coalport China Museum ready for opening.
On the heritage side, volunteers printed up historic glass plate negatives, and a social history sub-group led by the late Ken Jones transcribed his oral history recordings, capturing the memories of hundreds of local people.
Income from membership fees allowed the Friends to buy items for the collections. The most important picture acquisition was a drawing by Edward Edgcombe of the Iron Bridge, acquired with 60 per cent funding from the Friends in 2015.
Direct support for projects included £4,000 in 1974 to rescue the blast furnaces at Blists Hill from the undergrowth, and then £300 to buy "Bess" in 1978 and £2,000 for "Prince" in 1983 – the first horses on the site.
As membership numbers rose so did the income, from around £2,000 a year in the early days to over £40,000 today.
Geraldine added: "From the outset there has been a strong social as well as academic element to the Friends’ activities in the form of monthly talks that are open to all."
