Secret Ironbridge: A tale of two churches

In an earlier blog post, Secret Ironbridge: Great Western Railway, we found that Coalport had two railway stations. Jackfield, another small village, had two churches, but why?

St Mary’s #1

The ‘Red’ church had an official title of St Mary’s, but its colloquial name was coined from its construction (within an uncertain date range of 1759 to 1799) using local red brick.

It was reputedly haunted, either by the lady who funded it and wanted it built in a specific alignment and/or by a young girl “wearing a bonnet, a flowing cape and carrying a lantern“. The latter possibly relates to a field fronting the church which holds a mass grave of victims of cholera pandemics in 1832 and 1848.

In 1850, the church’s morning attendance was recorded as 53 adults and 125 children, but services ceased just 10 years later. Some records report that it became unsafe due to ground movement, although it stayed standing (albeit as a ruin) for a further 100 years before being demolished in 1961.

There is a volunteer group ‘Friends of the Red Church‘, currently working to restore the neglected graveyard, uncovering and sharing its history and that of people and events that shaped their lives.

At about the same time that services ceased at the Red church, there was a movement to erect a new church in the memory of George Pritchard, the late High Sheriff of Shropshire, who was credited with being the driving force to bring clean drinking water to the area, following the above-mentioned cholera outbreaks.

St Mary’s #2

In the early 1800s, Jackfield had established itself as an important river port, taking coal and other products made in nearby Broseley onto wharves supplying hundreds of river trows (flat-bottomed boats) plying their trade (at that time the river Severn was navigable and was the equivalent of todays motorways). The area was noisy and dirty and, with many migrant boatmen coming-and-going, was reputed to be an unsavoury place.

However, by the mid-1800s, the new Great Western Railway had been carved through the village, leading to the demolition of many houses and the decline of river transportation. New industry, namely brick and tile works, had sprung up, and with it, piles of waste product tipped onto the riverside where the wharves had once been. It was here that the new St Mary’s church was built.

Local manufacturers donated much of the materials, and it possibly ended up as a competition to see who could be seen to be the most generous, judging by the ornate brick and tile work.