Jackfield Tile Museum

The Jackfield Tile Museum is dedicated to the extraordinary heritage of decorative tile-making in the Ironbridge Gorge, housed in the magnificent Victorian factory buildings of the former Craven Dunnill tile works on the south bank of the River Severn in Shropshire. Part of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust and a component of the Ironbridge Gorge UNESCO World Heritage Site, the museum celebrates one of the most visually spectacular craft traditions of the Victorian era through a collection of over 5,000 tiles and tile panels spanning 150 years of ceramic design.

Jackfield, on the south bank of the Severn between Coalport and Ironbridge, was one of the most important centres of decorative tile production in Victorian Britain, home to two major manufacturers — the Craven Dunnill Company and the Maw and Company factory — whose products adorned the floors, walls, and fireplaces of buildings across Britain and around the world. The distinctive red clay of the Ironbridge Gorge, combined with the area's expertise in ceramic production inherited from centuries of pot-making, made Jackfield an ideal location for tile manufacture, and the two factories between them produced millions of tiles for palaces, public buildings, churches, railway stations, shops, and suburban houses across the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

The Jackfield Tile Museum was established in 1983 within the former Craven Dunnill factory, a magnificent Victorian industrial building whose architecture — brick arched windows, decorative brickwork, and surviving kiln structures — is itself a testament to the ambitions of Victorian ceramic enterprise. The collections encompass encaustic floor tiles, majolica wall tiles, transfer-printed tiles, hand-painted art tiles, and architectural ceramic elements, presented in dramatic full-scale room settings and display panels that demonstrate how tiles were used to transform the interiors and exteriors of Victorian buildings.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Jackfield Tile Museum is its collection of original Victorian tile installations — rescued from demolished buildings or preserved in situ — including complete pub interiors, shop fronts, and domestic fireplace surrounds that show the decorative power of the tile in its original context. Working demonstrations of traditional tile-making techniques are offered seasonally, and the museum's studios provide facilities for contemporary tile artists working in the tradition of the Jackfield factories.