Shropshire April 2013 - Ironbridge Gorge

The Ironbridge, Ironbridge

Friday 19th April  - dry, with quite a bit of sunshine, though more so later in the day. Cloudier where we were, in Ironbridge Gorge. Still too cold in wind to hanging around too long.

Our journey to Ironbridge was via the B'road to Bridgnorth between the Clee Hills. Red soil in fields here - Old Red Sandstone (late Silurian / Devonian). On our right, Titterstone Clee Hill, with the white radar dome sitting on a narrower darker building base, which made it look very like a golf ball. On our left, Brown Clee Hill, with the two prominent masts on top. Views of Long Mynd, Wenlock Edge and hills to the south and east, into the West Midlands, the Malverns.  Brown Clee Hill did look browner overall than Titterstone Clee Hill with the fields / hedges. The road climbed steadily, then down on the east side to Bridgnorth, though not right down to the River Severn. the higher town was busy. Got held up in a narrow road behind bin lorries, vans coming the other way. From Bridgnorth, continued north along road to Broseley, over higher ground. Views back towards Wenlock Edge, Brown Clee Hill very prominent, the Titterstone Clee Hill wedge poking above surrounding hills in middle distance. At Broseley (now a  pipe museum here, one of  the  Ironbridge Gorge museums collective, though I don't know whether the pipes here were for plumbing,  conduit or smoking). From there, the  road descended steeply down into the Gorge. This brought us to the large car park close to the Iron Bridge and Tollhouse.

The Iron Bridge from the quay

From there, we took a stroll along the gorge. A bit chilly and too time constrained to sketch for long, but we both took plenty of photos and I came with plenty of potential painting ideas . Since my father first brought me here in 1985,  staying at the youth hostel in Coalbrookdale,  I've made I've drawn to the Gorge repeatedly.  Lots to explore in the way of the old buildings, workings, the museums and, of course the famous Iron Bridge.  The river here is striking.  The estuary excepted, this is the roughest, fastest flowing, most ominous stretch of the River Severn. This is because, the flow of the river is constrained in the gorge, the channel narrowed. Walking along it at Jackfield today, I detected a hint of a downhill gradient towards its exit from the gorge to the east . It was particularly turbulent and rough here, even though it didn't look particularly high (or low either) today. At Ironbridge, near the quay, the ducks were clinging close to the banks. There was lots of plant debris caught in the trees along the banks, some of it several metres above the present river level, put there by recent floods  - more on that later.

First, we crossed the Iron Bridge to the village. Busy around the bridge itself, though it quietened down as we walked up the river towards the quay, Gorge Museum, Ironbridge brewery, through Dale End Park, under the Albert Edward iron Bridge (Coalbrookdale Co. 1863) with the Power Station on the far side. On the  Brewery wall adjoining the riverside path were two short sections of wrought iron fencing topped with gold painted teddy bear heads. The Chief Chartered Engineer (note 1)thought they looked a bit macabre. His photo included sign tied on the railings saying, Warning Unstable Wall please do not attempt to lean on, sit on or climb the wall. I didn't think these bears were grisly, they just looked like teddy bears to me.

Ironbridge Power Station

I've always thought that there was something ugly-beautiful and surreal about the four cooling towers at this power station: their setting near the northern entrance to the Gorge at Buildwas, the reddish tinge to the concrete, their proximity to a tonally dark moody, fast flowing river. Today, the cloud looked quite low above them, the steam merging with it. A bird hovered above the southernmost tower. The contrast against the darker cloud to the north as the top part of one of the middle towers caught the light, as the sun peeped through was striking - ideas for another moody painting of the Severn? This is Ironbridge B,  which has been generating electricity for the National Grid since 1969, with a capacity of 1000MW.  It is now owned by E.ON UK.  There's been a power station here since construction of its predecessor began in 1929. For now, the power station still appears to be operating, though I don't know for how much longer - Wikipedia say 2015. Many coal-fired power stations are around the UK are being closed, coming to the end of their lives. Coal is also a very dirty fuel and the worst kind of fossil fuel in terms of greenhouse gas (particularly carbon dioxide) emissions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironbridge_Power_Station | accessed 24/04/13

Albert Edward Bridge

We Followed the narrow, rather precarious path along the riverbank, underneath the Albert Edward Bridge, before turning round and walking back upriver towards Coalport - back along the road along the riverbank through Ironbridge, across the Iron Bridge, through the car park and along the cycle path above the river to Jackfield.

Here, there'd been the decorative tileworks, now the Tile museum and Maws craft centre / studios. Both took lots of photos of the lettering on the outside of the tileworks and staining on the brickwork. Quite a few newer shops / studios have sprung up around the tileworks, including a specialist cycle store, various studios in the modern Fusion building behind the Tile Musuem. Then came to the Half Moon pub, with its large riverside garden. Recalled this was where I'd photographed CC.Eng having a beer by the Severn nearly 5 years ago. Pity it was too cold to sit outside here today.  There were some tantalising moments when it warmed up as the sun came out, or we came to a more sheltered area out of the wind, only for it to cloud over again and the wind get up.

Tileworks, Jackfield

A bit further upriver was The Boat Inn - sometimes occupied by the Severn -see Flood notes. Across the Coalport and Jackfield Memorial Bridge  footbridge (built in 1922) was  was the  Coalport Canal and base of the Hay Incline Plane. Crossed the Memorial  Bridge to Coalport, where we had quick lunch stop by the river. We then walked along the short stretch of canal, past the kiln chimneys of the china works, now another museum and Coalport youth hostel.

Hay Incline Plane, Coalport

Coalport Canal and China Works

Walked back to Ironbridge on the Jackfield side of the river, stopping to look across the river to the remains by the roadside of the Bedlam Furnaces. In the woods above our side of the river was some sculpture: three rusty looking shallow bowls seemingly blending in with the woodland,  two near the main path, a smaller one in a stream / spring of rusty, iron stained water  - David Griffiths, Wrekin New Milestones  - Spiral Bowls, 1996.

David Griffiths - Spiral Bowls

Back in Ironbridge, we had tea and scones / toasted teacake at the cafe across the road from the bridge. Out of the wind, so we sat outside. I then went back to the quay to sketch the view down river towards the bridge, while CC.Eng explored up the hill in Ironbridge.

We headed back just before 4pm, this time via Much Wenlock. I enjoyed the views, roads quieter than down our way and, for the passenger less nerve wracking than busy motorways / dual carriageways. For the driver, though, frequently slow going on the single carriageways with pushy people behind.

Note 1 - in case anyone's wondering, Cycling Man, Munros Man and the Chief Chartered Engineer (CC.Eng)  is the same person, my other half. I switch between these names according to context: usually Munros Man if we're out walking, Cycling Man if he's cycling while I'm walking / anything to do with cycling; Chief Chartered Engineer if, as in Ironbridge, anything to do with engineering / buildings / bridges.

Ironbridge Gorge geology notes

Along the Gorge, the Silurian shales (Coalbrookdale Formation) and limestone (Much Wenlock Limestone) found along the Wenlock Edge escarpment. Above this, the Carboniferous Coal Measures, containing mainly shales with coal, siltstones and sandstones.  There is a big geological time gap in between (an unconformity). These sediments provided everything needed here for the iron industry, tile making and porcelian industries from the eighteenth century onwards.

The Gorge was formed during the Quarternary period, probably at towards the end of the last glaciation (the Devensian). Before then, the upper River Severn flowed north from the Welsh hills, taking the Dee as a tributary and presumably flowing into the Irish Sea where Dee estuary is now. Rather than the Lake Lapworth theory (big lake surrounded by the Shropshire and Welsh Hills, with an ice sheet to the north coming in from the Irish Sea, the Gorge formed by the lake overflowing),  geologists now believe that gorge was cut by meltwater towards the end of the last glaciation. This meltwater flowed beneath a glacier, therefore it was under enough pressure to cut a deep trench into pre-existing glacial deposits and the bedrock - the Severn Trench - and also flow up hill.  Therefore, it could then have flowed uphill over  ice abutting the Wenlock Limestone and cut the Ironbridge Gorge. Indeed a deep, buried channel (the Severn Trench) has been identified about 100m below the present ground level, between Melverley and Ironbridge, running beneath Shrewsbury.

Ref - Peter Towgill, Geology of Shropshire , 2nd Edition, Crowood (2006)

BGS online geological map viewer http://www.bgs.ac.uk/data/mapViewers/home.html | accessed 24/04/13.

 The gorge is prone to landslips, with a particularly notable one at Buildwas at the western end of the Gorge in 1773, a few years before Abraham Darby III built the Iron Bridge.

Flood notes

As the The Boat was closed at lunchtime, I got a good look at the floodmarks painted on the door next to the main entrance  - all the way to the top of it and so many marks that, if many more floods, they'll need a new door. The highest mark - at nearly 20ft (19'6") - was in November 2000 -I remember hearing all about those floods well. 2000 is still the wettest year in the UK  since records began in 1910, though pipped to the post by 2012 by just a few millimetres (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2013/2012-weather-statistics).  Much of the 2000 sog came at the end of October / start of November. The last Sunday night in October was very wet and windy. At home in Hampshire, we had a power cut for several hours. On the Monday, rivers were rising in most parts of the country, most notoriously on the Ouse through York and all along the Severn, including Ironbridge Gorge. Heavy rain continued for about a week after the storm and there was renewed flooding in the December.

High water marks at The Boat Inn, Jackfield

The next highest mark was 1946 (19'5'), then March 1947 (19'1').

This may reflect the present landlord / pub goers being particularly enthusiastic about high water marks, but  recently there have been a lot of floods:  21/01/08 - 17'2", 05/01/98 - 15'8", 08/02/11 - 15'7" - there was me thinking 2011 had been an overly dry year, though wetter in Jan, Feb, before a too far too fast early, very warm, dry spring. 21/11/09 - 14'10".

The most recent run of floodmarks was last winter - 25/12/12 - 15'1", 01/01/13 - 16'2",  29/01/13- 16'6". This might imply a steady rise between Christmas and late January, but it was probably up and down January.  The first half of January was fairly dry, certainly  compared to December. Later in January, there would have probably been the added effect of melting snow. Indeed it was a very soggy spell just before Christmas. On the Environment Agency's Flood Warnings webpages, I noted numerous warnings and alerts all the way along the Severn,  and not the only time last year either.

 I wonder if there are any plans for flood defences here. Though there aren't many low lying  areas in the steep sided gorge, there's not much room for the river to spill, making the measured peaks higher than they probably would be  on a more open floodplain. Near the Memorial Bridge and Boat, there were people working with a digger like machine looking as if they might be drilling / boring into the ground (as they were at Littlehampton last September, where flood defences have since had the go-ahead).