Welcome to the Industrial Heritage Networks and Support website. This site is maintained and updated by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust who run the project and the networks. We aim to support industrial heritage in England through networking, information exchange, guidance, and training. Please explore the website and please contribute! For more information you can … Read more Welcome to the IHNs website!
Avoncroft Museum has published their 2025 craft workshops programme. These workshops include a number of subjects relevant to industrial heritage sites, including blacksmithing, traditional signwriting, and basket weaving.
The workshop programme runs from Febraury through to November. During the workshops you’ll get expert guidance, all the materials needed, and free museum entry. No experience is needed. Costs vary, and there is a discount for Members of Avoncroft Museum. Follow this link for more details:
The Heritage Trust Network is launching a pilot programme of learning and skills development sessions for heritage organisations, including industrial heritage organisations and sites, in the West Yorkshire Combined Authority. The programme has been commissioned by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority as a pilot to facilitate resilience and capacity building in heritage organisations, particularly grass-roots, community-led organisations.
The pilot programme will be delivered in partnership with Locality, the national membership network supporting local community organisations to be strong and successful (see their website here: https://locality.org.uk/). There will be an in-person discovery event for organisations/groups that are interested in participating on the 13th February in Bradford, and an online discovery event on the 27th February where they can find out all about the programme.
If you’d like to take part, or you know an organisation who might please book a place via Eventbrite or share details. Any queries can be sent to: admin@heritagetrustnetwork.org.uk
The early new year is often a time for charities and musuems to undertake staff training and maintenance in the ‘off season’. Online, several organisation offer free training and briefing videos relevant for industrial heritage sites. Some of the recent offerings listed below provide an opportunity for armchair training.
The East-West Workshops on Industrial Archaeology aim to exchange ideas and knowledge among Western and Eastern colleagues to build a more international and diverse industrial archaeology. The workshops are organised jointly by the Institute for Cultural Heritage and History of Science and Technology (USTB, China), and the Association for Industrial Archaeology (AIA) together with its Young Members Board. Videos of all the workshops are available on the AIA’s YouTube Channel, including the latest event from November 2024 on ‘Weaving the Industrial Period’. Follow this link to view the workshops: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCILr2TkRAOIfk_NKchshwZQ
On Thursday 21st November 2024 the ‘Craft of the Miller’ network held an online conference on ‘Managing Health & Safety Risks in Your Mill’. Jon Cook gave an introduction to highlight a number of key risks in a working mill, including hygiene, flour dust, vacuum equipment, and fire risks. Jippe Kreuning explored how to work with a stone crane and how to operate it safely to lift a set of millstones. You can catchup with the recordings from the conference here: https://network.molens.nl/
Finally, Historic England have a range of heritage webinars to watch with topics from flooding, embodied carbon, and renewabler energy, to heritage building skills, roofs, and windows. The Historic Environment Webinars strand includes a session on the role and work of the Canal & River Trust form November 2024. Follow this link to view the webinars: https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/training-skills/training/webinars/recordings/#technicaltuesdays
The dealines for several grant streams suitable for Industrial Heritage museums and sites occur in early 2025. To catch up with what is available for industrial heritage sites and museums explore the following websites.
Foyle Foundation Small Grants The Small Grants Scheme is provided by the Foyle Foundation to support smaller, grass-roots, and local charities in the UK with projects that have the potential to make a significant difference to their work. Grants range from £2k to £10k and the closing date for applications is 31 January. Find outr mor eby followign this link: https://foylefoundation.org.uk/how-to-apply/small-grants-scheme-guidelines/
The Heritage Alliance, whilst not a funding body in itself, co-manages the Heritage Funding Directory with the Architectural Heritage Fund. This free resource for the sector includes a directory listing funding sources for heritage projects across the UK (and internationally), and includes some helpful guidance on fundraising. It is regularly updated, so its worth visiting regularly.
Finally, the Association for Industrial Archaeology runs several annual grant and award schemes specifically for industrial archaeology and heritage, with closing dates at the end of January and the end of March. Follow this link for further details: https://industrial-archaeology.org/aia-awards/
2025 marks the bi-centenary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1825 connecting places, people, communities, and ideas, and ultimately transforming the world. To celeberate the birth of the modern railway, three councils, Darlington, Durham, Stockton-on-Tees, and Tees Valley Combined Authority, have joined forces with a range of local, national, and international partners, to deliver a nine month festival of internationally significant projects throughout the bicentenary year.
The ‘Railway 200’ events are designed to showcase how the railway shaped and continues to shape national life, as well as inspiring a new generation of young pioneering talent to choose a career in rail. Events across the year will build to the main celebration on the 27th September, the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway.
A Global ‘whistle-up’ on New Year’s Day 2025, with more than 50 hetritage railwys blowign the ihsiltew son their engiens at the same moment, signalled the start of rail’s 200th anniversary. From January to September a wide variety of activities and events are planned to celebrate rail’s remarkable past, its role today, and its importance to a sustainable future.
In 2025 the Anderton Boat Lift celebrates 150 years of use. Designated one of the Seven Wonders of the Waterways, the boat lift was designed by engineer Edwin Clark to connect the Trent & Mersey Canal with the River Weaver Navigation fifty feet below and opened on 26 July 1875. Although it has been re-engineered several times, the lift has successfully carried boats between the two waterways for most of its 150 years, with only a couple of decades out of action in the 1980s and 1990s due to safety concerns caused by corrosion. At the turn of the Millenium, more than £7 million was raised to fund a major restoration and the boat lift began operating again on 26 March 2002.
The Canal and River Trust, who now run the Lift, will be transporting visitors back in time to 1875 by hosting a spectacular Victorian Fair over the anniversary weekend of July 25-27. During the rest of the summer season, as well as boat trips through the Lift, visitors will be able to enjoy other events, including Steam at the Lift (May 10/11), Pirates Weekend (June 21/22), Old Time Sailors Concert (July 4), and Steampunk Lift Off Weekender (September 27/28).
A generation on from the 2002 re-opening, the Lift needs a major upgrade to keep it operational. The Canal and River Trust are thus currently working to develop an ambitious ‘Engineering the Future’ project to revitalise the Anderton Boat Lift and Visitor Centre, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The whole structure requires blast cleaning, repairing and re-painting, the timber control cabin replacing, and IT operating system updating. This is expected to take 12 to 18 months, with a total estimated cost of £13.5 – £15 million.
The Small Grants Scheme is provided by the Foyle Foundation to support smaller, grass-roots, and local charities in the UK with projects that have the potential to make a significant difference to their work. In the last three years recipients have included the Science Museum, the Mills Archive Trust, the Hull Maritime Foundation, and the Black Country Living Museum.
The Foyle Foundation was formed to implement the will of the late Christina Foyle. She was the daughter of William Foyle who, with his brother, founded the former family owned bookshop Foyles in Charing Cross Road, London. The Foyle Foundation will complete its grant giving programme in 2025, marking 25 years of giving to the fields of the Arts, Learning, Community Small Grants, State Schools Libraries and formerly Health. The Foundation awards funding in two main areas:
The Canal and River Trust (CRT) is looking at gathering oral histories about the people who were involved in the post-Second World War restoration of canals in Birmingham and the Black Country.
The aim is to record this important period in the history of Britain’s canals by talking to the people who worked on the restoration projects. CRT are looking to record personal stories to find out which canals people worked on, what they did to restore the canals, their motivations for being involved, the impacts the restoration work had on them, and information about restoration techniques.
This work is being undertaken with inHeritage. inHeritage is a heritage interpretation consultancy delivering innovative and accessible opportunities to communicate your key messages to your target audiences through a range of traditional and new media. They also manage interpretation, community archaeology, and oral history projects.
If you would like to get involved with this project please email Bill Bevan at: bill@inheritage.co.uk
Birmingham canals post restoration. Image courtesy of CRT.
Using a combination of archive and contemporary photographs, engineering drawings, prints, paintings, adverts and diagrams, it looks at the history and evolution of gas holders, engineers and manufacturers, their place in society and impact on the English landscape. The final chapter considers the future redevelopment of these sites, including those where gas holders are being successfully re-purposed’.
The news that Cannock Chase Council is proposing the closure of the Museum of Cannock Chase in April 2025, as part of proposed budgets cuts for 2025/2026, has led to the establishment of an online petition against the closure.
The Council is holding a public consultation on the closure of the museum, and the council’s Prince of Wales theatre, which runs from the 29 November 2024 to the 2nd January 2025. The council released a report in November regarding the closure of the msuem and theatre which estimated that closing the two cultural venues would save £350k per annum. This report can be download by following this link (see pages 179 – 187): https://www.cannockchasedc.gov.uk/council/meetings/agendas-reports-minutes/cabinet/2024-11-28
The Museum of Cannock Chase first opened in 1989 on the site of the former Valley Pit, a training pit for young coal miners. It covers the history of the Cannock Chase area across four galleries and also hosts a number of temporary exhibitions throughout the year. Although council-owned, it is operated by the charity Inspiring Healthy Lifestyles (IHL), who who also run the theatre, with a contract until 2027. Vistor numbers to the free musuem, before COVID, reached 46,500 in 2018/19. The number of visitors since the pandemic initially fell to 10,500 in 2021/22, but partially recovered to 21,000 in 2023/24.
The online petition notes that: ‘The museum’s collections tells over 300 years of history of the district and wider area and have become cherished resources. They have collected and safeguarded not only our industrial history but our social history, presenting and preserving the stories of people past and present – of those people who worked to create and shape our communities, and of the people who continue to do so. This entire collection is now at risk of being lost.’
Industrial Heritage Networks 