The Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site is a very special place where history and nature have combined over many years to produce a landscape and environment of great beauty.


Nature endowed the area with many of the raw materials of industry - coal, limestone, wood, iron ore, clay and water. Combine with that the genius and entrepreneurial skills of people like Abraham Darby and John Wilkinson and it is no surprise that this once rural area was transformed in the 18th century into "the most important industrial area in the world". The Ironbridge Gorge is now often referred to as the Birthplace of Industry because it was here that in 1709 Darby perfected a technique for manufacturing iron using coke which enabled, for the first time, the mass production of high quality iron.

The iron works of Coalbrookdale and surrounding area gave the world the first iron rails and iron wheels and in 1779, the famous Iron Bridge, the world's first bridge constructed from iron and now an internationally recognised symbol of the Industrial Revolution.

What are World Heritage Sites?

The 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention is an international agreement based on the understanding that certain natural and cultural places on Earth are of outstanding, universal value and as such, should form part of the common heritage of humankind. The splendour of these sites enriches our lives and illustrates the diversity of the plant and its inhabitants. They are ours to cherish and respect, and their disappearance would be an irreparable loss.

The World Heritage List contains over 800 sites including places as unique and diverse as The Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and closer to home, Stonehenge, Hadrian’s Wall, the Cities of Bath and Edinburgh and of course the Ironbridge Gorge which was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1986.

The Ironbridge Gorge Was included in the World Heritage List because of its unique role in the birth of the Industrial Revolution which originated in Britain in the eighteenth century and later spread across the World.

For more information about World heritage visit the UNESCO website www.unesco.org/whc