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The Coalbrookdale Literary & Scientific Institute is as much an outcome of the Great Exhibition of 1851 as the museum quarter of South Kensington. It is a response, by the Ironmasters of Coalbrookdale, to the perception that Victorian Britain needed to improve the quality of design of its great manufacturers. It was built and endowed by the Coalbrookdale Company in 1859 to teach Art & Design, and accredited by the South Kensington and City & Guilds of London (ie the inheritor of the Great Exhibition). It continued in educational use up until 1969. In 1977 ownership transferred to the Museum and it was transformed into a Youth Hostel with teaching rooms which opened in 1980. During its life as a hostel, it has accommodated over a quarter of a million hostellers, many in educational groups.
The building is Listed Grade II*, is built of the Coalbrookdale Company’s blue and yellow bricks and forms part of the unique surviving eighteenth and nineteenth century Ironworks community within the Coalbrookdale area of the World Heritage Site.
The Project is aimed at renewing the useful life of the building, principally by repairing its interior period features and refitting the hostel accommodation to bring it up to acceptable modern standards. As a viable hostel it will continue to make the unique heritage of the area accessible by providing affordable accommodation, particularly aimed at young people, by framing a story of the aspirations of a great Victorian enterprise and by retaining an inspirational educational function within Coalbrookdale. |
