Heritage sites should reflect the people who built the country, not those who ruled it, Lisa Nandy said, as she vowed to support Britain’s “neglected” industrial past.

The culture secretary said the focus of the heritage sector had been skewed towards stately homes and that she would champion the local mill.

She announced £9 million funding to rescue the museums at Ironbridge, Shropshire, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and said that the intervention would not be her last.

Nandy said: “Ironbridge is symbolically incredibly important to us as a government and to the country. The history of our country is not just the history of kings and queens and stately homes. It’s the history of ordinary, extraordinary people who built our country through the contribution, the ingenuity and the hard work that went into things like manufacturing and our industrial heritage.”

Nandy said she was a card-carrying National Trust member who took her son to big houses regularly. She said, however, that the government was keen to champion “neglected” industrial history.

“These amazing historical buildings, whether it’s the mines, the railways, the factories, the mills, they’re all part of the really important industrial heritage in this country, which, frankly, has been neglected for too long,” she said.

The heritage sector is struggling as costs are rising and visitor numbers have failed to recover from the Covid- 19 pandemic. While the National Trust is turning a multimillion-pound surplus, less glamorous areas face challenges. One was the Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust, which celebrates the Unesco World Heritage site where iron was first smelted with coke.

It has been awarded £9 million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and its museums, listed buildings, monuments and collections are to be transferred into the care of the National Trust. The money will allow the Trust to secure the future of Ironbridge’s ten museums, 25 listed buildings and scheduled monuments, as well as 400,000 objects of national importance.

Nandy said she viewed Ironbridge as a symbol not only of Britain’s past but of how the Labour government wants heritage to be celebrated in the future.

Mark Pemberton, the chairman of the board of trustees at Ironbridge, said: “The investment ... is recognition of the global significance and national importance of Ironbridge.”