Star comment: Closure is a blow to our history
The Iron Bridge is a symbol in metal. The Coalbrookdale company which forged that metal is a living symbol, a place of toil and industry by humanity in this birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.
The announcement that the historic Aga Rangemaster works at Coalbrookdale is to shut is a profound blow to the workforce and an equally profound blow to a continuous thread of living Shropshire heritage which stretches back to the beginnings of the 18th century.
The very place which played a key role in the creation of the modern industrialised world is being killed off. The importance of the works as a place in global history has not proven enough to save it.
While relics of the Industrial Revolution fell into disuse and decay around it in the Ironbridge Gorge, the Coalbrookdale Works, which proudly bears the legend “Coalbrookdale. Estd. 1709” on its old building, has breathed fire and belched smoke for over 300 years.
When in the early 1980s other foundries and metalbashing industries in this part of the world went to the wall, the Coalbrookdale plant battled on, upholding and maintaining a proud tradition.
It is true that it is not the major employer that it once was, but every job is precious. In war and in peace, the works has done its bit.
The loss of the plant at Coalbrookdale is a terrible blow for Shropshire because of what it represents, and is a terrible blow for the Ironbridge Gorge because it can be seen as the last act in a process of industrial decline hereabouts. Tile works, china works, metal works, even a (smoking) pipe works over the river in Broseley – all retreated leaving the single ray of light which continued to shine at Coalbrookdale.
It is hardly any time at all since another major employer in its day, the Ironbridge Power Station, closed for good, and the process of demolition there will begin shortly.
This year is the 50th anniversary year of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum.
The museum has done a wonderful job in preserving the past and creating an award-winning attraction which attracts thousands upon thousands of visitors from around the world.
What will become of the Coalbrookdale building, it is obviously far too soon to say. It was a last bastion, a breathing, employing, commercial enterprise proving the lie to any impression that the entire Ironbridge Gorge has become a museum recalling past industrial glories. But once the Coalbrookdale plant, this last survivor, has become history, that is what the Ironbridge Gorge will be left with – history.
