Jackfield Tile Museum facts for kids
The Jackfield Tile Museum is a super cool place where you can learn all about the history of decorative tiles made in Britain. It focuses on the years between 1840 and 1960. During this time, the factory where the museum is now, along with another nearby factory called Maw & Co, were really important for making beautiful tiles.
You can find the museum in a small village called Jackfield. It's close to Broseley, right on the south side of the River Severn in the amazing Ironbridge Gorge. This area is in Shropshire, England. The whole Ironbridge Gorge is a World Heritage Site, which means it's a very special place recognized globally. It's even known as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution! The Jackfield Tile Museum is one of ten museums in the Ironbridge Gorge, all looked after by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust.
The museum itself is inside an old factory building that used to belong to a company called Craven Dunnill. Guess what? They still make tiles there today, especially a type called encaustic tiles.
A Look at Tile History
Jackfield has a long history of making pottery and ceramics. People have been creating things from clay here since the 1500s! In the early 1700s, a family called Thursfield moved to Jackfield. Many of the old "Jackfield wares" (that's what they called the pottery from this area) are thought to have been made by them.
From Factory to Museum
The Craven Dunnill company stopped using their Jackfield factory in the early 1950s and moved to Bridgnorth. After that, a different company used the buildings to make things from iron and bronze.
Then, in 1983, the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust bought the factory. They got some help from a group called the Architectural Heritage Fund to do it. By 1989, tile making started up again at the site. And in 2001, Craven Dunnill took over the tile making business there once more!
Amazing Tile Collections
The museum has a fantastic collection of tiles. You can see works by famous tile designers like William De Morgan and many other historic tile makers. They even have rooms set up to show you what homes looked like with these tiles in different time periods, like a 1930s living room.
See also
- Listed buildings in Broseley
