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Coalbrookdale is the historical heart of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums. The people, processes and products of this area were essential in driving forward the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century. The process of smelting iron with coke instead of charcoal was perfected in Coalbrookdale by Abraham Darby I in 1709. Others had tried, but it was the processes developed at the Coalbrookdale Works which led to the national revolution in the making of iron. From the initial output of humble cooking pots, successive Darby’s expanded the Works to make wrought-iron, cast steam engine cylinders, bridges (the most famous, of course, being the Iron Bridge erected over the River Severn in Shrophire in 1779/80), and by the Victorian period, decorative metalwork of considerable intricacy and beauty. Once described as "the most extraordinary district in the world", the Ironbridge Gorge is still a remarkable, and beautiful, place to visit today. A huge amount of early industry survives as furnaces, factories, workshops, canals and the settlements of Coalbrookdale, Ironbridge, Jackfield and Coalport. There are ten award-winning Museums spread along the valley beside the wild River Severn - still spanned by the world's first Iron Bridge. See the products that set industry on its path and the machines that made them. Watch and talk to the Museums' craftsmen and costumed demonstrators as they work iron, fashion china and glass, and bring alive the people who lived and worked here.