TV historian Adam Hart-Davis stopped off in Ironbridge to help round off the 300th anniversary celebrations of Abraham Darby’s ground-breaking first use of coke to smelt iron.

The star was at Enginuity in Ironbridge to deliver a lecture on industry and the environment, just days before the climate change summit in Copenhagen, which starts on Monday.

The lecture on Tuesday was jointly sponsored by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust and the University of Birmingham.

Mr Hart-Davis’s TV series have chronicled the history of inventors and inventions.

He said: “Ironbridge saw the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1709 with Abraham Darby’s discovery, which then prompted the discovery of all the technological advances that moulded our society.

“We are now having to mitigate the effects of global warming that probably resulted at least partly from those developments. We are all being urged to do our bit, but it needs to be Government-led.”

Steve Miller, chief executive of the trust, said the discoveries made 300 years ago had powered modern society and today, as we realise how it has affected the environment, the challenge is to find a more sustainable technology.

He added: “Our challenge now is to develop cleaner technologies that will allow us to move forward to a sustainable, greener future.

“We are looking to a new generation of cleaner technology and materials to drive the next industrial revolution.”