Blists Hill is an industrial open air museum, depicting life as it may have been in Shropshire, England, during the time of the industrial revolution. It is one museum of ten operated by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust. History
Originally the site was purely industrial, consisting of a brick and tile works, blast furnaces and mineworks operated by the Madeley Wood Company, and a short section of the Shropshire Union Canal, running from the site to the Hay Inclined Plane, which transported boats up and down the 207 ft. high incline from Blists Hill to Coalport. Present buildings
The museum consists of buildings which fall into one of three categories.
# Buildings which were originally part of the industrial site (e.g. the Tinsmiths shop)
# Buildings which are recreations of buildings found elsewhere (e.g. The New Inn Public house, the original of which still stands in Walsall)
# Buildings which have been put up from scratch and represent a generic type (e.g. The Sweet Shop)
Each building is manned by one or more costumed demonstrators, who have been trained in the skills and history of the profession they are depicting. Thus, in the printers, you can see posters, or newsheets actually being printed as you watch. The demonstrators talk in the third person, referring to the Victorians as "they" or "them" rather than in the first person "I" or "we" which some similar museums employ. Those running the museum believe this allows greater scope for discussing modern techniques, and comparing those techniques with what you see at the museum. Visitors to the museum can go into the Bank, which is the first building you come to, and change modern coinage into token coinage, representing predecimal farthings, halfpennys, (or ha'pennys as they were known), pennys, and threepenny bits, at an exchange rate of 40 new pence to 1 old penny. They can then use the token coins to buy goods whilst visiting the museum.[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Blists Hill Victorian Town ]
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