This 200-year-old wharf played a key part in accelerating the Industrial Revolution. It remains a place of engineering heritage, local history, and ongoing restoration.
Explore its transformation below.
This photograph, taken from the South, shows the East Basin and the canal going East, both the larger Transhipment Warehouse and the smaller one,(now converted into the Welldeck Cafe) and the original road bridge at the bottom towards Apley.
This photograph shows the wharf much as it was before restoration began. The East Basin is completely filled in, the Green Romney Building has not been dismantled nor re-purposed at Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust’s Blists Hill site, and the stable block has not been rebuilt.
This mammoth task required removing large amounts of spoil, uncovering metal, plastic, timber, and glass buried underneath. This photo is from Day 1 of the excavation on 29th October 2019.
We had to prepare and fill 101 concrete “slabs” in order to make the East Basin waterproof. Here you can see Slab “E” receiving its concrete in December 2021.
This is the small transhipment warehouse when we started restoration in September 2018. The scaffolding enabled the roof to be completely stripped and restored, plus getting to and repairing the spalled brickwork. We then added a new toilet block, replaced the rotten external staircase and renovated/replaced all windows and doors.
With water back in our East Basin, nature is returning. In September 2025 we spotted our first Kingfisher, noted for preferring clean water.
After eight years of voluntary effort, the cafe finally opened on 14th December 2025, and Phase 1 of the project was complete.
The restoration team is a small army of volunteers that has put in countless hours to bring the wharf back to life.
For a detailed look at the massive work carried out, please click the button below which links to a library of the projects that continue to make our wharf such a wonderful place.
