Blists Hill is an industrial open air museum, depicting life as it may have been in Shropshire, during the time of the industrial revolution. It is one museum of ten operated by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust. Originally the site was purely industrial, consisting of a brick and tile works, blast furnaces and mineworks operated by the Madeley Wood Company, and a short section of the Shropshire Union Canal, running from the site to the Hay Inclined Plane, which transported boats up and down the 207 ft. high incline from Blists Hill to Coalport. The museum consists of buildings which fall into one of three catagories. An open air museum is a distinct type of museum exhibiting its collections out-of-doors. ... Shropshire (abbreviated Salop or Shrops) is a county in the West Midlands region of England, bordering Cheshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, and the Welsh counties of Powys and Clwyd. ... The Industrial Revolution was the major technological, socioeconomic and cultural change in the late 18th and early 19th century resulting from the replacement of an economy based on manual labor to one dominated by industry and machine manufacture. ... A blast furnace is a type of furnace for smelting whereby the combustion material and ore are supplied with air from the bottom of the chamber such that the chemical reaction does not take place only at the surface. ... The Madeley Wood Company was formed in 1756 when the ironworks at Bedlam Furnaces, one mile west of Blists Hill, on the River Severn, was founded. ... The Shropshire Union Canal near Norbury Junction The Shropshire Union Canal is a canal linking Wolverhampton with the River Mersey. ... The Hay Inclined Plane is an example of a Canal inclined plane. ... Coalport is a village in Shropshire on the River Severn at grid reference SJ700021, shortly downstream of Ironbridge. ...

• 1 Buildings which were originally part of the industrial site (e.g. the Tinsmiths shop)
• 2 Buildings which are recreations of buildings found elsewhere (e.g. The New Inn Public house, the original of which still stands in Walsall)
• 3 Buildings which have been put up from scratch and 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 are depicting. Thus, in the printers, you can see posters, or newsheets actually being printed as you watch. 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. Those running the museum believe this allows greater scope for discussing modern techniques, and comparing those techniques with what you see at the museum. Visitors to the museum can go into the Bank, which is the first building you come to, and change modern coinage into token coinage, representing predecimal farthings, halfpennys, (or ha'pennys as they were known), pennys, 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. Map sources for Walsall at grid reference SP0198 Walsall Art Gallery Walsall is an industrial town in the West Midlands of England, it is located northwest of Birmingham and east of Wolverhampton. ... A farthing (presumably from four thing) was a British coin worth one quarter of a penny. ... This article discusses the history of the English and British Halfpenny coin, from the 12th century onwards. ... For silver pennies produced after 1820 see Maundy money The silver penny was introduced to England around the year 785 by King Offa of Mercia, in the English midlands. ... The threepence or thruppence, was a denomination of currency, used by various jurisdictions in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, until decimalisation of the pound sterling and Irish pound. ...