Victorian town attraction to reopen

A recreation of a Victorian town is set to reopen, following a takeover by the National Trust.

Blists Hill is one of a number of attractions previously run by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, which tell the story of the birth of the Industrial Revolution.

The National Trust took over in October last year with a promise to increase visitor numbers, helped by a £9m government grant.

Mark Agnew, its project director in the Ironbridge Gorge, said before reopening they had to deal with everything from IT changes to a troublesome bees nest.

The National Trust now runs 10 museums, and 35 listed buildings and scheduled monuments, including Blists Hill Victorian Town, the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron, and the Old Furnace.

When it took over it said the attractions bring in "330,000 visitors annually from the West Midlands, across the UK and beyond".

Agnew said the majority of those visitors had come from the local area and the first aim was to maintain those numbers, but eventually he wanted to bring in more visitors from further afield.

Explaining why it had taken 11 weeks to reopen the attractions, Agnew said a lot of work had been done on IT systems, staff training and induction and renegotiating contracts.

He said his team had "moved mountains to get to this point" and there had been a few unexpected challenges, including three water pipe bursts at Blists Hill and an invasion of bees.

Agnew said a "very sizable bees nest" had been found at the Blists Hill reception and it had taken a mobile platform and a team of beekeepers to safely remove them.

Visitors to the Ironbridge attractions will not see big changes at first though, and he said even the signage would remain virtually the same.

"We don't have a lot of money so we have got to be very careful about what we invest it in," he said.

But there have been a few changes at Blists Hill - including the introduction of a new pony.

Agnew said: "Opening the doors for the first time is always a slightly frightening prospect."

It was also "the moment everybody has been really looking forward to".

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