Victorian Town - Ironbridge

Some years ago, when our children were much younger, we purchased 'passport type' tickets for the Ironbridge Gorge museums. We visited some of the smaller sites - our younger children enjoyed making clay flowers at the china museum, had fun at the tile museum and visited the general, and traditional museum, when they were quite small and couldn't really interact with any museum! We left the main outdoor site at Blists Hill since we thought it would be too much for them. In recent years we have been trying to find a suitable week end to take advantage of our remaining tickets. Our daughter is not really interested in industrial history, and, since she was away for the week-end on a school trip, we took the opportunity to take our son with us.

The site is structured as a Victorian town - suitable buildings having been re-located from the surrounding area and grouped together on a manageable site. With much to see, we arrived about mid day, left as the museum was closing at about 6 pm and didn't quite succeed in seeing all the exhibits - although I for one had completely run out of energy.

This first batch of photos shows you the 'Victorian street' and some of the commercial buildings:

Businesses in the HIgh Street included, a photogapher, haberdasher, pharmacy ( I think featured in the 'Victorian Pharmacy' TV series), a general grocers, a bicycle shop, bakers, locksmiths and a traditional fish and chip shop. I did not manage to take any photos inside the haberdashers, but was fascinated to see that I recognised many of the small items in the display case - some inherited from a great aunt and my grandmother. However, I failed to identify the 'page turner' and 'glove finger stretcher'. There were some beautiful examples of hand made lace. Crimped and trimmed bonnets, gents tweed hats, lavender bags and embroidered handkerchiefs were available for sale. Some materials were also for sale and I bought a length of muslin.

The final photo shows the candle makers - more about this tomorrow.

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A trio of brooches from me today - one for each of my main shops.

At Folksy:

At Etsy:

at WowThankYou:

I had made a series of ribbon patchworks, backed by quite a thick felting. Originally intended for cuffs, I decided they were too thick and inflexible and made some cuffs constructed on fleece, which worked much better. I re-discovered the patchwork pieces and decide they would make good brooch backgrounds. I hope you like them!