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!
Beamish, The Living Museum of the North, has won the Art Fund Museum of the Year for 2025 and has been presented with £120,000 – the largest museum prize in the world. The 350-acre site impressed the judges away with its ‘joyous, immersive, and unique’ exhibitions.
Beamish’s commitment to preserving local heritage was recognised by the Art Fund, with Rhiannon Hiles, Chief Executive of Beamish, being presented with the award during a ceremony at the Museum of Liverpool.
Jenny Waldman, Director of Art Fund and chair of the judges for Art Fund Museum of the Year, said: “Beamish is a museum brought to life by people – a joyous, immersive and unique place shaped by the stories and experiences of its community. The judges were blown away by the remarkable attention to detail of its exhibits across a 350-acre site and by the passion of its staff and volunteers.”
Beamish, which opened in 1970, is an open-air museum that brings to life the North East of England’s Georgian, Edwardian, 1940s and 1950s history, through immersive exhibits where visitors engage with costumed staff and volunteers, and experience regional stories of everyday life. In 2024, the museum welcomed over 838,630 visitors and remains the region’s most visited attraction and museum.
The Association of Independent Museums(AIM) have announced the winners of the inaugural Museum Fundamentals grants. Funded by the Pilgrim Trust and The Julia Rausing Trust and launched in December 2024, the AIM Museum Fundamentals grant is designed to respond to the varied needs of AIM members.
Amongst the initial round of 12 grants is a succesful application from The Long Shop Muaseum in Suffolk to redesign and redisplay the ‘Made in Leiston’ gallery. The design and content of the new exhibition is based on audience research conducted over the last two seasons. The new displays will focus on unlocking the social history of the town and the people who lived and worked there over a 250-year span, and on technological change. The Long Shop Museum was founded in 1984. It is housed in a cluster of historic buildings in the Suffolk market town of Leiston. The buildings are survivors of the original 19th century engineering works site of Richard Garrett and Sons who specialised in famring machinery. Further details here:
The AIM Museum Fundamentals grant is funded by the Pilgrim Trust and The Julia Rausing Trust, and launched in December 2024. It combines the valued collections care and conservation funding supported by the Pilgrim Trust with new funding from The Julia Rausing Trust. AIM members can apply for up to £20,000 for funding to undertake a collections-based project. If you’re interested in applying to Museum Fundamentals, expressions of interest for the next round are welcome until Friday 8 August. Further details here: https://aim-museums.co.uk/news/first-aim-museum-fundamentals-awards-made/
Long Shop, Leiston, Suffolk. Image copyright The Long Shop Museum.
The Winding Engine at Blists Hill Victorian Town is one of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust’s earliest and most significant exhibits. One of the very few preserved steam winding engines – and of even fewer able to wind up and down a historic mine shaft – it has been out of action since 2018. To repair and restore this machinery will cost £100,000. A fudn was setup in 2024 to raise this amount, and it has recently recieved a genrous donation from the 29th May 1961 Charitable Trust.
Winding head gear at Blists Hill, Ironbridge. Image copyright Dr Michael Nevell.
When it is working, the Winding Engine exhibit can bring the sounds, smells and sights of a working engine to life for our visitors. It helps us tell the story of the men, women and children who worked in Shropshire mines and the daily dangers they faced. It also demonstrates a vital feature of mining and the development of mining and engineering during the Industrial Revolution.
The phased plan for work will see the pit head, boiler house, and engine house refurbished, the mine shaft inspected and cage refit. The work will primarily be carried out by IGMT’s Steam Team, expert volunteers, supported by our Steam Engineer and outside contractors.
More money still needs to be raised, so if you would like to contribute to getting the engine winding again follow this link:
As part of increasing access to the Bennerley Viaduct and its surrounding environment, the Friends group want to build a new footbridge over the River Erewash. They also want to secure the riverbank to prevent its erosion. The Friends already have support from a variety of funders for this project, but need to raise the rest of the amount needed to build the new footbridge bridge.
All the monies raised will go towards to providing the materials for the bridge and river erosion works, which will involve supportive sustainable material used to protect the bank from erosion. They are planning to use local volunteers and students from the University of Kent to help build the footbridge. This new bridge will provide an important access route to the structure and its surrounding environment, so people can enjoy this hidden gem from top to bottom.
The Friends of Bennerley Viaduct were formed in 2019 as a community charity to help save and make accessible the Bennerley Viaduct and its surrounding environment. The Bennerley Viaduct is a Grade II* listed former Railway Viaduct sandwiched between the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire near the towns of Kimberley and Ilkeston.
The Canal & River Trust (CRT) have launched a Crowdfunding Appeal for an urgent conservation project to save the Clyde Puffer Basuto, one of the UK’s most unique and historically important vessels.
Built in 1902, Basuto played a vital role in industrial Britain transporting iron across the country, before then coaling naval vessels during World War I, and supporting wartime efforts in World War II. With a rich and varied history, she has been a working vessel, a coal barge, and a steam-powered cargo ship. She remains one of the oldest vessels of her kind still afloat today, and is recognised as an important vessel on the National Historic Ships’ Historic Fleet Register, alongside esteemed vessels like the Cutty Sark and HMS Victory.
However, time and the elements have taken a devastating toll on Basuto. Currently sitting in the lower basin at the National Waterways Museum in Ellesmere Port, this iconic vessel is sinking and must be continuously pumped to stay afloat. Due to her construction Basuto cannot be repaired while in the water, and without immediate action she risks sinking completely, which would further damage her structure and threaten the water quality of the surrounding area. Having secured generous initial funding from the National Heritage Memorial Fund to undertake this conservation effort, CRT need your help to secure the remaining funding and to raise awareness of this historic conservation effort.
Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings recently won a European Heritage Award/ Europa Nostra Award 2024 for Conservation and Adaptive Reuse. A free webinar has been orginsed with the architects who led the project, Geoff Rich and Tim Greensmith, who will share with the fascinating story of the project.
Established as a Flax mill in 1797, the site of Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings includes the world’s first iron-frame building which has been described as the ‘grandparent of skyscrapers’. Its combination of cast iron beams and columns, brick arches, and cast iron ties made its construction fireproof, while large windows admitted natural light for its numerous employees. A century later, it was converted into a maltings through a second state-of-the-art design, with windows either blocked up or made smaller, boiler houses demolished, a timber hoist and new tower added, and a large kiln built.
The brief for this project called for an exemplar of sustainable refurbishment to support the next 100 years of use for a building with a particularly innovative design heritage. Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCBStudios) have conserved the enduring elements of both uses to provide four floors of flexible working space, while weaving in a contemporary layers to accommodate a visitor centre and café.
The online meeting will end with a Q&A session. Please find more information about the project and the speakers below. To register please follow the link on Eventtbrite (though hurry as the webinar is at 5pm on the 24 April!):
Arts Council England (ACE) has opened a new £20 million fund to support local authority museums. ACE have also published the timetable for Museum Estate Development Fund (MEND) Round five.
The Museum Renewal Fund targets museums owned and directly maintained by local authority funding, or with a governance link to a local authority. The programme is intended to help museums meet the shortfall between operating costs and income throughout their 2025-26 budget, where the shortfall results in reduced programming, footfall, and days open to the public.
Museums can apply for a minimum of £10,000 up to a maximum of £1million. The application deadline is 22 May with outcomes expected by 26 June latest. The funding period runs from August 4 to 31 January 2026.
ACE have also released the timetable of Round 5 of the Museum Estate Development Fund (MEND). This capital fund targets non-national Accredited museums and local authorities based in England. It covers funding to undertake vital infrastructure and urgent maintenance backlogs which are beyond the scope of day-to-day maintenance budgets.
The total fund is worth £25million and grants range from £50,000 to £5million. Expressions of Interest for Round 5 open at 9am on Monday 12 May 2025 with a deadline of Thursday 5 June.
On 24 May and 7 June, between 2:00 pm and 4:00 pm, the Mills Archive Trust will be hosting a two-part webinar series covering the fundamental skills needed to protect and share archival records.
For over two decades, the Trust’s UK accredited archive has preserved the history of the traditional and modern milling industry. They want to share these skills, whether you are an individual collector or part of an organisation.
The first session will cover how to organise and catalogue archival records. The second session will help you preserve them, including old documents or digital files, from decay and make them accessible online. To join the Caring for Your Collection webinars and for more information, visit new.millsarchive.org/caring-for-your-collection/. For more information, email friends@millsarchive.org.
As English Heritage prepares to welcome visitors to the Flaxmill Maltings building in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, a hunt for the missing bell has been launched.Matt Thompson, the curatorial director of English Heritage, commented that “we believe the bell went missing in the late 1980s or early 1990s, when Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings was left derelict. Whilst it is possible that the bell could have been melted down, it is more likely that someone took it as a souvenir of this imposing, historic building which – at the time – looked close to ruin”
The empty bellcoate at Shrews Flaxmill Maltings. Image copyright Dr Michael Nevell.
Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings is known as the grandparent of the skyscraper, the building being the world’s first multistorey, iron-frame building, with the design paving the way for modern high-rise buildings. The site opened in 1797 as a flax mill and then, from 1897 to 1987, was used as a maltings. It also served as a temporary army training unit and barracks during the second world war. A third of the 800 workers at the flax mill were under 16 and some as young as nine. Shrewsbury itself was too small to provide that number, so children were brought in from as far afield as London and Hull, mostly from the workhouses. Often orphans, the children were given housing, food and clothes but not paid wages. The missing bell would have called the children in from the apprentice house nearby.
Originally operated by a pull rope, the bell changed to an electric chiming mechanism after the second world war, but was lost when the building was left derelict after the closure of the business in 1987. Believed to be around 60cm (24in) high, the bell is cast with the year “1797” on it. The bellcote has been restored but remains, for the moment, empty.
Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings opened on 1st April 2025 as English Heritage’s first new paid-for site in 21 years.
Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum and Markfield Beam Engine and Museum have merged under a new umbrella organisation, the Heritage and Communities Trust. The merger, which was finalised on 31st January 2025, brings together two of Greater London’s well-known industrial heritage sites.
Both museums will retain their individual names and distinct identities while benefiting from shared resources, expertise, and a unified governance structure. This strategic partnership creates the largest dedicated industrial heritage charity within Greater London in terms of public benefit and multi-site operation.
The flywheel of the pumping engine at Markfield. Image courtesy of Heritage & Comunities Trust.
The merger builds upon years of collaboration between the two listed Victorian-era sewage pumping stations, which are located approximately 45 minutes apart on foot along the River Lea. Both museums will continue to offer free entry to visitors, maintaining their commitment to accessibility and community engagement. “By joining forces, we’re creating a stronger, more resilient organisation that can better preserve and celebrate our shared industrial heritage,” said Abdullah Seba, Chief Executive of the Heritage and Communities Trust. “Our visitors will benefit from enhanced programming, improved facilities, and a more comprehensive understanding of London’s industrial past.”
The newly formed Heritage and Communities Trust will oversee both museums as well as two attractions at the Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum: The Tool House (a community maker space) and Supperclub.tube (a pop-up dining experience in a decommissioned Victoria Line carriage), with plans for further growth in the future. The Board of Trustees for the Heritage and Communities Trust includes representatives from both original museums to ensure continuity and balanced governance. Both museums will remain free to enter, continuing their position as the only free-entry industrial heritage museums in Greater London.
Walthamstow Pumphouse was built for Walthamstow Urban District Council and extended in 1896 to accommodate the current engine. It was closed around 1970. The museum opened in 1997 when a group of local enthusiasts came together to restore the Grade II listed Marshall engines and form the Friends of the Pumphouse. Markfield Beam Engine was built by the Tottenham Local Health Board in the 1880s and began its working life in 1888. It closed in 1964. In 1984 a Trust took on responsibility for the engine. In 2007 Haringey Council regenerated Markfield Park and restored the Grade 2 listed Engine Hall. The Trust restored the beam engine to full working order in 2008.
The Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum is open every Sunday from 10:30 am to 16:00 pm. Visit the website here. Markfield Beam Engine is open on selected Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays. Visit the website here.
The Walthamstow Pumphouse. Image courtesy of Heritage & Communities Trust.
Industrial Heritage Networks 