We've been to Ironbridge Gorge (with superb advice from people here), and now I wonder what other industrial heritage museums and sites are out there. My planned route will include both Birmingham and Stoke, good areas for this sort of thing I understand, but I don't know what specifically to seek out.

Also -- how do the Potteries stack up in terms of museums or historical factory tours, as opposed to shopping opportunities? I enjoyed the Coalport museum and factory exhibits at Ironbridge and would love to see something along those lines.

Thanks for any info!

It's a long time since I lived in the Potteries but it looks as though you will find all you could want (and more) at:
http://www.visitstoke.co.uk/index2.htm.

You can find a wider geographical range at
http://www.wm-museums.co.uk/museums/
As you might expect in Birmingham, something on canals, jewellery and transport, even guns) - but I wouldn't have expected a leather museum in Walsall (which also has a new and highly-publicised art gallery).

If you're interested in steam trains you could do the ride from Bridgenorth

I tried Google on Industrial Museum England and panned out gold. I think the only place as big and all-embracing at Ironbridge is Beamish in County Durham. But if I take all the links Google gives me and map them out I get this, starting in the north.

County Durham
Beamish
Skinningrove
Leonard Mining
Woodhorn Colliery
Ryhope Engines
Heatherslow
Killhope lead mining

Yorkshire
Calderdale, Halifax
Cartwright, Braford
Armley Mills, Leeds
Coal mining, Wakefield
Shepherd Wheel, Sheffield
Abbeydale, Sheffield
Kelham Island, Sheffield

Manchester Industrial Museum, incorporating the world?s first inter city railway
Silk, Macclesfield

Midlands
Etruria, Stoke
Derby Industrial Museum
The industrial section of the Birmingham Museum

Bristol Industrial Museum

London: Wandle Museum, Merton

[email protected]

There was quite a big thread on teh Potteries a couple of yeards ago, which I found at


http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessa...archText=stoke

and if you could bear a trip to Scotland, New Lanark is worth seeing

Thanks everyone for the links! Lots of reading to do...