Distance: 4.25 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
Urban and suburban walk taking around ninety minuites to complete from central Telford to Blists Hill living history museum on the edge of the Ironbridge Gorge UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Story
The Walk
Getting Back
The Town Where it is 1896 Forever
2023 is the 50th anniversary of the opening of Blists Hill Victorian Town.
Located just above the Ironbridge Gorge, on the eastern fringe of the UNESCO World Heritage Site (one of two major industrial World Heritage Sites in the Midlands), Blists Hill is a reconstructed Victorian town somewhere in eastern Shropshire’s coalfield, where it is forever 1896.
Opened in 1973 it has drawn millions of visitors to explore, experience and be entertained by staff and volunteers cosplaying late Victorians in a historically accurate way, surrounded by buildings either reassembled or recreated on the site.
It is a great day out. As both a child and an adult I have really enjoyed day trips there, and it will be interesting to see how the attraction evolves and is reinterpreted in the decades to come.
The story of how Blists Hill came into existence is a fascinating one. It has some parallels with the Black Country Living History Museum on the edge of Dudley and Tipton. This museum of Black Country life in the 19th, early 20th (and now mid-20th) Century was developed and opened at a similar point in time.
Like the Black Country Living History Museum, Blists Hill comprises industrial remains which existed in situ prior to the creation of the museum, and an imaginary late Victorian town created from buildings threatened with demolition elsewhere in Shropshire which have been transported and reconstructed on the site.
The prehistory of Blists Hill is fascinating, the site having been heavily industrialised in the 18th and 19th Century.
The museum site was bisected by the Shropshire Canal constructed between the River Severn which flows just a few hundred metres from Blist Hill’s southern boundary, and all manner of extractive industries in the area that now comprises Telford. This short canal once led from the River Severn via the Hay Incline Plain (preserved on the Blists Hill site) to the collieries, ironstone mines and clay pits above. The waterway brought in the raw materials which made the industrialisation of the Ironbridge Gorge possible. It’s very practical, industrial nature as a canal system is illustrated by the network’s name: the Shropshire Tub Canal system.
Along the waterway, which was largely dis-used by the 1850s, there grew up a coal mine which operated into the 1940s, as well as claypits and eventually an ironworks which eventually closed just after the First World War.
At one time the site is believed to have been so heavily industrialised that during the 1870s several thousand men, women and children were employed in the metalworks, extractive industries and transport on the site. All of these former industrial sites whether in reconstruction or ruined form are incorporated into the museum.
This was a key objective of the founders of the museum in the late 1960s and 1970s when the industrial heritage of the Ironbridge Gorge was recognised and efforts made to conserve and memorialise it.
The foundation of Telford new town in the late 1960s is crucial to this. Many of the town centres in Telford like Wellington, Madeley and Stirchley are actually pretty old. They are former industrial towns which had faded by the 1960s as their coal deposits dried up and industry became more concentrated in larger centres like Birmingham and the wider West Midlands.
This means that Telford was grafted onto the existing frame of the ex-Shropshire coalfield and its mining towns and villages, breathing new life into an area which was being left behind as the verisimilitudes of the capitalist economy and capitalist production shifted. What Blists Hill does from its position on the south western edge of the Telford conurbation is memorialise the former mining and industrial towns and culture of eastern Shropshire. A very different image of the county from that which we tend to imagine.
Well worth reflecting upon, visiting and appreciating now that Blists Hill is moving into its sixth decade.
The Walk
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.
This walk from Telford to Blists Hill Victorian Town living history museum begins at Telford Railway Station.
From the platform head up onto the footbridge which also spans a dual carriageway.
Once, up on the bridge turn left and cross the dual carriageway heading towards a 1980s vintage business park.
On leaving the bridge keep walking straight ahead down a snicket into the centre of the business park.
Presently you come out into the middle of the business park with an office building used by Telford and Wrekin Council on your left.
Turn left and walk down the road towards this office building.
At the corner of the council office building turn right and head up a snicket beside the office block.
Soon you come to a junction. Here, turn left again.
Follow the path as it twists around to another footbridge across a dual carriageway which you cross.
On the far side you are standing in the carpark of the complex of shopping centres that comprises Telford town centre.
Walk across this carpark following the footprint of the shopping centre. This is the best way to cross the carpark because it is very busy.
Soon you reach the far side of the car park. Here turn left and follow the path down to the road below.
Once on the pavement cross the road then turn right.
Quickly having passed beneath a bridge you reach a junction with another larger road.
Here, turn left and walk a short distance down the road.
Soon on the right handside of the road you come to a road running up towards Telford Town Park past Telford International Centre, the town’s main conference centre.
Cross over the road here and head to the right up this road past Telford International Centre.
Soon you reach the edge of Telford Town Park.
Enter Telford Town Park and then head slightly to the right, towards the main pathway through the park.
Turn left and walk straight along this path heading through the park. Soon you reach a road running through the park which you keep walking along passing a zoon on your left.
Presently on your left there is a footpath running downhill off the road.
A little way down this path there is another footpath running off to the right.
Turn right and walk down this footpath.
After some distance you reach a junction. Here turn left and walk downhill towards The Silkin Way.
The Silkin Way is named after Lewis Silkin, the Atlee government minister who passed the New Towns Act, allowing for the establishment of new towns like Telford.
Upon reaching the Silkin Way a former railway line shut in 1964, shortly after the establishment of Telford (or Dawley New Town as it was then called), turn right.
You keep following the former railway line and signs for the Silkin Way all the way to Blists Hill.
As is typical of ex-railway lines it runs pretty straight, crossing a mostly wooded landscape through the suburbs of Telford. Which are interesting in themselves, consisting as they do of blend of modern buildings and old ones constructed during Telford’s pre-history as a mining and quarrying centre.
Presently the path curves around to the left, and you come to an underpass on the right which you walk through.
On the far side of the underpass you cross a bridge over a still working railway line. This one used to carry coal to the old Ironbridge Power Station shutdown and demolished a few years ago. There is talk of opening it up as a passenger railway serving southern Telford.
Soon after the railway line you come to a junction where two paths meet beside some industrial ruins.
Here take the left hand fork running uphill.
Continue along this path approaching Blists Hill museum.
You cross a bridge where the Forester’s Arms pub and a black metal sculpture representing a pit pony pulling a car stand on a roundabout.
Continue a little way beyond this bridge, and soon you pass through an underpass.
On the far side take the path running off to the right across parkland.
This leads you to a pavement running beside a road to the right of the park, just beyond the sign stating that you are entering the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site.
Keep walking down this road some distance until you reach the sign for Blists Hill museum off to your left.
Walk along the access road and into the museum’s carpark, the entrance is then off to the right on the far side.
This is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
Blists Hill itself is not well served by public transport. However, the nearby Telford town centre of Madeley has frequent buses throughout the day to central Telford bus station, as well as more sporadic services to outlying towns like Broseley, Much Wenlock and Bridgnorth. Telford bus station has services to destinations across Shropshire, while the railway station is served by frequent trains towards the West Midlands conurbation and Shrewsbury as well as less frequent ones to Mid and North Wales as well as London.