Fords and Ferries in Ironbridge
Ironbridge
Coalport bridge and toll houses.
Coalport
Coalport Incline Plane
Coalport
Ironbridge and Broseley Station
Ironbridge
Images in this collection
Click any photograph to open it full screen, zoom in and read the full caption.
Benthall Edge Ferry
About 1905
Here the Benthall Edge ferry hauls across on its wire rope, the ferryman's cottage tucked below the slope and the Edge rising steeply behind. Look closely and you can spot the taut rope cutting the water. Published around 1905 as a postcard titled 'Benthall Edge Ferry', it shows a crossing used daily by workers long before any road bridge existed here.
Published postcard, photographer unknown
The ferry shed today
Modern photograph
Photographed in the present day, this corrugated-iron shed over a timber frame is one of the last physical traces of the ferry crossings still standing on the riverbank. Unassuming as it looks, it survived where the boats, the ropes and the ferrymen themselves did not, making it a quietly precious link to a vanished way of life.
Courtesy of Graham Hickman
The Wharfage, colourised
Late 19th century
This colourised version of the riverfront, taken in the late 19th century, shows the Tontine Hotel and the Iron Bridge closing off the far end of the street. The tinting brings out details easy to miss in black and white, including the muted brickwork that still lines the Wharfage largely unchanged today.
Colourised archive photograph
The last run of the ferries
1909
The newly completed bridge at Jackfield stands finished in this 1909 photograph, while the last of the old ferry boats is circled on the water below it, almost as an afterthought. It marks, quite precisely, the moment a centuries-old river trade came to an end, replaced overnight by fixed iron and stone.
Annotated archive photograph
The Dog & Duck, colourised
Early 1900s
This colourised early 1900s postcard shows the black-and-white timbered Dog & Duck inn beside the river at Coalport, figures visible standing in its doorway. The tinting picks out the timber framing especially well, a detail that's harder to appreciate in the plainer monochrome versions of the same view.
Colourised postcard
A crowded crossing, colourised
Early 1900s
The brick cottages of Coalport rise behind a ferry boat that looks to be carrying a full shift of workers home in this colourised early 1900s photograph. Scenes like this were once utterly ordinary, repeated twice daily as tileworks and mine shifts changed on opposite banks of the river.
Colourised archive photograph