Museum of the Gorge

On The Wharfage in Ironbridge stands a building that has changed its job more often than most towns manage in a century. Today we know it as the Museum of the Gorge, and it is about to begin another chapter.

1840s – Built for the river trade

The Severn Warehouse was built in the 1840s by the Coalbrookdale Company to serve the river trade. Goods were stored inside until the Severn rose high enough for barges to collect them. The Gothic front was not required by the work going on inside; it was there to be seen from the water.

Late 1800s to 1904 – The mineral water years

The building later became Long & Co.'s mineral water factory. In 1904 Owen Downey Murphy, then a travelling salesman for R. White's, took it on, backed by a £400 loan from his doubtful but supportive father.

By 1907 the difficulty of hauling stock up out of the valley persuaded him to move to Wellington, where the business went on to do well.

1920s to 1970s – Engines and anglers

The twentieth century brought petrol pumps, Castrol and AA signs and BSA bicycles. The warehouse became a garage and filling station.

It also sold fishing tackle, supplying rods and reels to people casting into the Severn a few yards away. Fuel at the front, bait at the counter — a sensible trade for a building on the riverbank.

Decline and rescue

By the 1970s it stood roofless and scaffolded, with no certain future.

In 1977 the newly formed Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust stepped in, and the restored building reopened as the Museum of the River, telling the story of the Severn and its trade. By the early 1980s it had been renamed the Museum of the Gorge, taking in the wider story of industry, landscape and innovation in the valley. Inside, the great model of the Severn Gorge maps centuries of change.

The next chapter – National Trust

For most of its life the Severn Warehouse has belonged to private owners and private enterprise. That is now changing. The building is passing into the care of the National Trust, which already looks after much of the Ironbridge Gorge, and with it comes the resources and the long-term commitment that a structure of this age and riverside exposure needs.

For visitors, little will alter on the face of it. The Museum of the Gorge will still open its doors, still house the great model of the Severn Gorge, still serve as the first port of call for many people arriving in Ironbridge. What changes is the footing the building stands on — no longer dependent on the fortunes of a single trust, but backed by one of the country's largest heritage organisations. After barge stores, mineral water, petrol pumps, fishing tackle and museum galleries, that is a remarkable seventh life for one warehouse.

Still listening to the river

When the Severn floods, as it does most winters, the water rises against the castellated walls just as it did in the 1840s.

The building has outlasted the barges that fed it, the factory that filled it, the garage that traded from it and the power station whose cooling towers stood behind it. It has watched the river rise and fall for nearly two centuries, and the river, for its part, has never quite let it forget which of them was here first. That quiet arrangement looks set to continue under the Trust's care — the warehouse keeping its vigil on The Wharfage, and the Severn keeping its eye on the warehouse.