Museum of the Gorge, Ironbridge

During the summer the river was too low to be navigable and so finished goods were held in warehouses until there was once again enough water for passage.

[1] This location is also the confluence of the main manufacturing area of Coalbrookdale, and its non-navigable river, with the valley of the Severn.

St Luke's is in the simple Commissioners' Gothic style, by local architect Samuel Smith of Madeley.

The Eastward, riverward face is extended with a church-like apse, flanked by two narrow towers decorated with cross-shaped arrow loops, but actually hiding chimneys.

The apse extension, originally an office, has tall lancet windows to give light, and reinforcing the church-like atmosphere of that facade.

[4] The sandstone walls of the 1780s wharf extend for half a mile between the warehouse and the Iron Bridge; they are also listed at Grade II.

The short distance from the doors of the warehouse to the river basin is crossed by plateway grooves for unflanged wheels, set directly into the paving of the wharf.

In the early part of the Industrial Revolution the Gorge contained a larger number of smaller furnaces than it would in later years.

One of the largest sections of the diorama is the 350 yards (320 m) long Hay Inclined Plane of the Shropshire Canal, opened in 1792.

Although the museum is otherwise one of the smaller ones of the Trust, the diorama and other displays here are useful at the start of a larger visit as an overview and context for the other sites.