page_title: Museum of the Gorge, Ironbridge
section_title: Diorama
hierarchical_section_title: Museum of the Gorge, Ironbridge / Museum / Diorama
caption_attribution_description: The Ironbridge Gorge diorama inside the Museum of the Gorge, Ironbridge.
context_page_description: The Museum of the Gorge, originally the Severn Warehouse, is one of the ten museums of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust. It portrays the history of the Ironbridge Gorge and the surrounding area of Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, England.
context_section_description: The centrepiece of the museum is a large diorama, 12 metres (40 ft) long. This represents the whole of the Gorge, as it was at its industrial height. 
  The diorama represents the visit of King George III to the Iron Bridge itself, in 1796. The bridge, opened in 1781, was now 15 years old. This was the period of the Napoleonic Wars and the First Coalition. At this time Britain was still at war with France, although not as actively engaged as it would be shortly. The industries of the Gorge were militarily important, although under the Quaker ironmasters of the Darby family the foundries of Coalbrookdale were not directly engaged in the casting of cannon, as other ironworks such as the Calcutts Ironworks in Jackfield (shown on the diorama) and the more famous Scottish Carron Company were.
  In the early part of the first industrial revolution the Gorge contained a larger number of smaller furnaces than it would in later years. Many establishments were small and in particular there were a large number of shallow bell pits extracting coal. These used horse gins for winding, models of which can be seen. Steam power is rare at this time, only a few of the larger furnaces having steam blowing engines.
  One of the largest sections of the diorama is the 350 yards (320 m) long Hay Inclined Plane of the Shropshire Canal, opened in 1792. Although mostly gravity worked, this also used an early Heslop patent rotative beam engine to winch canal tubs from the canal basin at the top. At the foot of the inclined plane is the short Coalport Canal and the newly opened Coalport China manufactory (1795) with its four bottle kilns.
  The Gorge site and its museums are a large destination for any visitor. The diorama provides a convenient viewpoint to gain an overall view of the several sites and an aid to planning a trip around them. Although the museum is otherwise one of the smaller ones of the Trust, the diorama and other displays here are useful at the start of a larger visit as an overview and context for the other sites.
caption: The Iron Bridge in the centre of the diorama
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