Around about once a month, I get an email from the mystery shopping company I work for asking if I can do some ‘urgent visits’ around the country. Last weekend, ten visits covering most of Northern Ireland turned up. I volunteered to do them all, and would have enjoyed a lovely holiday, if it wasn’t for someone else quickly nipping in and stealing them from me.
It took me about four hours to plan an imaginary journey around Northern Ireland. I wasn’t happy. Luckily though, my manager informed me there were some visits down in the midlands. I thought I might as well take them, and so last Sunday I took a trip with the mother and the brother down to Iron Bridge, Telford.
Before we got to Telford we had to stop via Uttoxeter, a town just below Derby. I think we must have spent half the fuel allowance on this visit, wriggling through every back street in the entire town to find the tucked-away store.
Uttoexter doesn’t do itself many favours though. OK it was my fault we got lost for half an hour, but simply the amount of roundabouts in that place is staggering! Roundabouts leading onto other roundabouts leading onto mega roundabouts. We circled a mini one twice we were so lost!
After getting over the dizziness of Uttoxeter, we made it down to Iron Bridge. It’s very rare I go to the midlands, I think there’s a reason they call it ‘the black country’, and so we thought it would be good to see how it all started for Britain, by taking a trip down memory lane, to the iron age…… wait; the industrial revolution.
So, as all well-educated young chaps should know, the industrial production of iron was born in Telford. A mega bridge was built, which seemed to impress people, and so everyone decided that iron production should commence on a mass scale. The bridge is the main attraction today, and the town has built various attractions to support a ‘grand day out’ (rather than people just gorming at a bridge).
One of these attractions was the house that housed the man who built the bridge – I think. It showed some dining rooms and a mock kitchen, etc… but it also had a dressing up room. Now, as you can see from the above picture, I feel I rather suit a Stuarts hat.
Anyway, so we were at the place where the industrial revolution all started. This is why we are one of the most enriched nations today. A good bit of hard labour and intense factory work has propelled us forward into an era of relative affluency and sophistication. China – I suppose – is currently rushing through what we managed over 200 years.
So, there’s a bridge. A huge arm spanning a massive gorge, gouged right into the Shropshire countryside.
The thing that really confuses me with the bridge is that, there’s not really anything on the other side of it. There’s just lots of trees and a toll booth. It’s as though they built a bridge for the fun of it, or for ‘the challenge’. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a wicked feat of engineering, especially when the intellectual sophistication of the average 18th century labourer was equivalent to that of a modern tree stump. However, I do feel that it may have been for nothing. In all the museums and things I went to, there was nothing that said why they built the thing. All I wanted to know was that there was a layer of limestone across the other side, or maybe a road to London, or anything. I reckon they just went mental and smelted too much iron, so had to get rid of the surplus.
The best thing I saw though was a general estimate of costs for the whole project. The iron cost £3,600, the advertising and ‘paintings’ cost £15, and the celebratory beer cost £24! It’s good to know that the manufacturers spent little on advertising what they were doing, to save it for one big piss up at the end of it all!
So that was Iron Bridge. Not the most eventful of trips, but a nice day out of the house with mum and the rodent. I now know how iron is made, and love the word ‘molten slag’!
