Gates, A Fountain and Statues

COALBROOKDALE AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE

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The Ironbridge Gorge Museum displays several Coalbrookdale manufactures which were were shown in 1851. The Coalbrookdale Company was well represented at the Exhibition and won several prizes.

Within the category of ‘General Hardware’ the Coalbrookdale Company exhibited iron gates, ornamental chimney pieces and fire grates, kitchen ranges, cooking stoves, boilers, tables, garden chairs and hall chairs, umbrella stands, hall tables and a hat stand, a door knocker, flower pot stands, ornamental vases and animalier art castings.

More mundanely, in the department of ‘Raw Materials’ there was a display of ‘square, round, flat, half-round and oval bar iron; angle T and girder iron; sash bar and moulding iron; tire iron; engine-floor and foot plate iron’. However, what people remembered and what was illustrated in the the catalogues, were two show pieces – the Coalbrookdale Gates with a Cupid and the Swan fountain in front of them, and the Coalbrookdale Dome with the Eagle Slayer statue inside it.

A ‘Council Medal’ (the highest class) went to the Company for ‘statues, a new method of bronzing steel grates, and diamond flooring for steam engines’.

KEYWORDS:  Great Exhibition, Crystal Palace, Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, Iron

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