Blists Hill Victorian Town
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Blists Hill is a former industrial complex in Shropshire, UK, which has been converted into an open air museum that attempts to recreate a Shropshire town at the end of the 19th century. It is one of the ten museums operated by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust.
[edit] History
In the 18th and 19th centuriues, Blists Hill was an industrial region consisting of a brick and tile works, blast furnaces and mineworks operated by the Madeley Wood Company. A short section of the Shropshire Canal ran from the site to the Hay Inclined Plane, which transported boats up and down the 207 ft high incline from Blists Hill to Coalport.
[edit] Open air museum
Blists Hill Victorian Town, originally called Blists Hill Open Air Museum, was opened in 1973, and has been slowly growing ever since. The museum's buildings fall into one of three categories: buildings that were already part of the industrial site (e.g. the tinsmith's shop), recreations of buildings found elsewhere (e.g. The New Inn Public house, the original of which still stands in Walsall), and buildings that simply 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 re-enact. For example, in the printshop, visitors can watch posters and newsheets being printed. 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); the museum management believes that this allows greater scope for comparing modern techniques with those re-enacted at the museum.
The first building visitor see in the museum is the bank, at which they can change modern coinage into token coinage that represents the predecimal farthings, halfpennies, pennies, 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.
