Jackfield Tile Museum

Jackfield Tile Museum stands in the village of Jackfield, beside the River Severn in Ironbridge Gorge, Shropshire. The site lies within a World Heritage landscape where the Industrial Revolution began. The museum occupies the former Craven Dunnill tile factory, a working workshop still producing encaustic tiles today. Jackfield has made ceramics since the 16th century, and the Thursfield family brought potters from Stoke-on-Trent in 1713. In the early 1950s the firm moved away, leaving the buildings to iron founders until the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust bought them in 1983. The collections show British tile design from 1840 to 1960, when Jackfield and nearby Maw & Co led the trade. Historic names such as William De Morgan appear alongside tiles rescued from Middlesex Hospital and Charing Cross Hospital. In 2014 the museum received a gift of 1,300 tiles spanning the 19th and 20th centuries from John Scott. Parts of the site, including the Blunging House, Clay Arks, Tile Press Shop and Kiln House, are Grade II* and II listed buildings. Tile manufacture restarted in 1989 and Craven Dunnill resumed production in 2001. Visitors walk through the working factory and see tiles being made by hand. The office frontage and listed workshops remain from the original complex. Display rooms hold examples of encaustic tiles and hospital tiles side by side. Outside, the Ironbridge Gorge offers steep wooded slopes and views of the river. The museum is one of ten Ironbridge Gorge sites managed by the National Trust.