Tontine Hill: The Street That Disappeared

Stand at the foot of Tontine Hill today and you see open grass, a broad pavement, and the Iron Bridge framing the view. It is hard to believe that this same spot was once one of the most tightly packed corners of Ironbridge — a steep street lined on both sides with shops, cottages and stables, running right down to the water's edge.

One old photograph captures the difference perfectly. Taken from the riverbank in the late nineteenth century, it shows the hill thick with buildings, a horse and cart waiting outside a shop with its awning out, and the Iron Bridge just visible to the right. There is barely a gap between the houses.

The hill takes its name from the Tontine Hotel, which still stands at the corner where the hill meets the Square. A tontine was a collective investment — subscribers paid in, and the last survivor took the pot — and the hotel was built in the 1780s on just such a scheme. The building has worn many names over the years, but it has outlasted almost everything else on the hill.

The shops that filled the hill

Before 1937, both sides of Tontine Hill were built up almost continuously. On the right-hand side, looking up from the Bridge and opposite the hotel, stood a terrace that included Bates & Hunt, the chemist — a large three-storey white building that dominates the old photographs. Next door was P. Thomas, Seedsman & Florist, remembered for the "Clay's Fertilizer" signs propped in its window. A confectioner's with a flat above, and several cottages squeezed close together, completed the row.

On the left-hand side, where the war memorial now stands, were the stables for the Tontine Hotel, along with more small houses and shops. The street was narrow, the buildings tall for their footprint, and the whole effect was of a busy little commercial strip clinging to the slope.

1937 — A bridge that was never built

In November 1937, the Wellington Journal reported that Salop County Council was preparing for a new bridge to be built alongside the Iron Bridge. To make way for it, the Council moved to compulsorily purchase almost the entire island block of property at the foot of the hill.

An aerial view from the 1920s or early 1930s shows the Square and the foot of the hill just before the scheme. The white hotel anchors the corner; the dark-brick building with its round gable window stands beside it. Cars have begun to appear, but the old street pattern is intact.

The compensation agreed gives a sense of what was lost: £650 for the grocer's shop and dwelling-house, £650 for the florist's and chemist's, £2,250 for the confectioner's shop with the flat over, and £275 for the cottages. That amounted to practically the whole block on the right-hand side of the hill. Then the Second World War broke out, and the new bridge was forgotten.

1946 — Demolition

The war halted everything, but in May 1946 the bulldozers finally moved in. The chemist, the florist, the confectioner's and the cottages on the right-hand side were demolished. The much-talked-about new bridge was abandoned — but by then, the buildings were already gone. A scheme meant to reshape the river crossing had instead swept away a street that had stood for over a century.

The stables and the memorial

On the left-hand side of the hill, the Tontine Hotel stables were demolished between 1949 and 1952, clearing the ground where they had stood. That cleared space was soon put to a new use.

The War Memorial, erected in the Square after the First World War, originally stood facing across the river towards the railway station — almost as if the soldier cast in bronze was waiting for comrades to come home on the train.

In 1965, the memorial was resited onto the cleared ground where the stables had been. But this placed it with its back to the river, a decision that was never popular with locals. The ground beneath is rubble from the demolished stables, and land stability means the memorial cannot be turned around without extensive and expensive modifications. The soldier, as it were, had his back turned — and there he has stayed.

The 1970s — Opening out the hill

The Telford Development Corporation undertook major road improvements in the 1970s, and the junction of Tontine Hill and the High Street was completely redesigned.

More surviving properties went. Pavements were relayed in York stone with distinctive Coalbrookdale cast-iron kerbs. Overhead cables were buried underground. The slopes were opened out and landscaped into the broad views we see today. The hill that had been a canyon of buildings became an open amphitheatre, with the Iron Bridge suddenly visible from the Square for the first time in living memory.

Tufnell's — the shop that everyone remembers

Even as the buildings thinned out, shops kept the hill alive. Tufnell's Newsagents & Tobacconists became a familiar name from the 1950s through the 1970s. With its striped awning, bold Wills's Cut Golden Bar adverts, and Wall's Ice Cream boards outside, it was where many locals got their daily paper, their cigarettes, or a bag of sweets after school.

A paired photograph, taken around 1962, captures Tufnell's in its prime. Above, behind the counter — two women serving, the newsstand behind them thick with headlines. Below, the shopfront itself, its windows full of the Shrewsbury Chronicle and the Sunday Express, the Golden Bar sign stretched across the front.

Families still remember queuing at Tufnell's in the mornings, or running in for ice creams on hot days. Other shops came and went — small grocers, minimarkets, confectioners, and later takeaway cafés — each adapting as Ironbridge shifted from a working industrial town to a visitor destination.

Today

What remains is almost unrecognisable from the crowded, bustling rows of shops and stables that once lined the hill. The story of compulsory purchase, abandoned plans, demolition, and road schemes has left us with the open space that frames the Iron Bridge. But the names of Bates & Hunt, P. Thomas, and the shopkeepers whose livelihoods were lost remind us of the people behind those vanished frontages.

The Tontine Hotel still stands at the corner, as it has for two and a half centuries, watching the hill change around it — from chemists and seedsmen to tea rooms and guest houses, from horse-drawn carts to scooters and hatchbacks.

The buildings went, but the hill keeps its memory.

Do you remember Tontine Hill before the changes? We'd love to hear your memories.