"Gorge Wartime Memories" by Richard Davies

lynnironbridgewalk
3 days ago
2 min read

Our Spring 2025 festival coincided with the commemoration of VE day on Thursday 8th May when 80 years previously at 3-00pm, victory was declared and marked across the UK with so many commemorative events.

To acknowledge a quite remarkable event in our history I put together a new “Walk & Talk” route which was well attended and is to be repeated (with some extra info) during our 2026 Festival on Saturday 9th May as “Gorge Wartime Memories”.

Looking back, as soon as war was declared the nation’s entire economy became totally focused on winning; strategic plans were actioned having an immediate impact on everyday life. Although the Gorge was not on “the front line” being well away from the blitzed areas, potential invasion beaches, and active fighter & bomber airfields, day-to-day living changed dramatically with every aspect of industrial capacity and available buildings being fully utilised for the “war-effort”.

Memorial Bridge where I will outline the fate of some of the men from the Second World War commemorated on the plaque below.

We will be walking from Coalbrookdale down to the Wharfage over the Iron Bridge and along the Seven Way to Jackfield looking at various ways people of the Gorge responded & worked in such troubled times together with some of the aftermath - and the air raids will be mentioned!

I am not a historian but I have always enjoyed more than just a passing interest in old buildings also, as a non-local, I again anticipate learning lots more about the wartime Gorge from other walkers.

The pace will quicken from Jackfield as we head up to Broseley and onto the site where a young US pilot crashed and lost his life in 1944 and then onto Benthall Hall. The walk will loop along the Shropshire way and beyond through the woods returning to Coalbrookdale.

I hope you can join me!

Richard