Name: Iron Bridge | 10 Places That Made England with Dan Snow
Uploaded: 2025-10-30T17:53:47.000Z
Duration: 8 min 14 s
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I've come to the beautiful town of Ironbridge in Shropshire.

Adverbs of degree

Now, this place has a very good claim to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and

it's certainly a symbol of that revolution.

And thanks to this, the thing that gives it its name, that huge iron bridge, the first big single span bridge on earth, made entirely of iron.

Ironbridge is located in Colebrookdale Gorge in Shropshire.

In the late 18th century, it was a heartland of industry, as it was rich with iron ore, limestone and coal.

The bridge crosses the River Severn, a great trading artery running through England.

In 1709, Abraham Darby, an industrialist living in Coalbrookdale, pioneered an innovative way of iron smelting and founded the Colebrookdale Company.

He used the local fuel, coke, to mass produce cast iron on a cheap but epic scale.

The iron industry surged and before you knew it, the West Midlands was choked with smog and flushed with cash.

Colebrookdale had gone from beautiful countryside to this, what contemporary sources describe as the fires of hell burning on earth.

The problem was this thriving trade needed a reliable way of getting from one side of the gorge to the other.

Enter the Derby family and their Colebrookdale company.

They came up with the idea of building this bridge as a gigantic PR campaign to show the world just what they could do with their ingenious new technology.

The bridge is made from 384 tons of iron, iron that was forged right here in Colbrookdale.

It's held together by five ribs and there are nearly 1,700 unique sections.

Some of those heaviest sections weighed over five and a half tons.

The bridge was constructed using wooden scaffolding, with the various iron struts being lifted up from boats on the river beneath.

We only have this one recently discovered painting of the scene.

And you can see the partially completed bridge there.

And I'm very struck by how grey everything is.

The water, the sky, the smoke, all is cloudy.

Very different to the scene today, which is so green and verdant.

Each of these metal pieces was cast separately.

They were poured into individually created molds, which meant if one was slightly bigger or small, another you could accommodate it in the later pieces that you were casting.

And you can see the process of casting on this one here, you got three smooth sides.

Here they would have been in the mold, in the sand, you'd have poured the iron into there.

And it means that one side of it was open to the air.

So you get these kind of humps and bumps, uneven texture.

The iron bridge's structural engineering used techniques that had been used for centuries in wood carpentry, dovetail and shoulder joints, wedges and tenons.

This was a gigantic statement of this region's power, its modernity, its ingenuity.

One visitor simply compared it to the wonders of the ancient world.

One single span of iron, he said, weighing many hundreds of tons, stretching a hundred feet.

I doubt whether even the Colossus of Rhodes weighed more.

Got some paintings here that give us a very interesting sense of what it would have been like in the decades after this bridge opened.

This one was commissioned by the Derby family.

They were very pleased with their triumph and they paint a pretty picture of the area.

A little bit of smoke rising from some chimneys up here.

And look, there's various members of the gentry.

Two ladies here being punted with their gentleman companion taking a look at the bridge, and

This is a genteel landscape, one of wealth.

Everyone admiring this brand new bridge in the middle.

But look at this next one, painted only about 20 years later, same area.

This is actually the Bedlam foundry, where some of the pieces of the bridge were cast.

This is a dark, dystopian, smoky, terrifying image of life.

There could be the sun in the sky here, or the moon.

People seem to exist in a state of semi darkness, illuminated only by the fires.

The bridge cost 6,000 pounds by the time it was finished in 1779, nearly twice its original estimate.

But the owners found a great way to make back their investment.

And on this end of the bridge, you've got the toll house because you had to pay money to cross.

The Derbys weren't doing this entirely out of charity.

And there's a whole table of tolls up here.

This is a replica of the sign that stood here or hung here since the 1780s.

And it gives you a great sense of the social history of the time, how people are traveling around.

Look for a carriage drawn by six horses, mares, geldings or mules.

every foot pastor crossing the bridge has to pay half a penny or a halfpenny to do so.

This bridge being private property, every officer or soldier, whether on duty or not, is liable to pay toll for passing over.

So no freebies for people claiming they're on His Majesty's service and as well as any baggage wagon, mail coach, or the royal family.

But this bridge was so much more than just a way to cross the river.

This was a statement forged in metal and one that was a physical testament to the limitless potential of this flourishing industrial empire.

This iron bridge changed the lives of everyone living in this valley.

It still does because we're still using it 250 years later.

But more importantly, it changed the lives of everyone living in England and further afield.

Because it gave people a vision of the future.