Can you help us with opening and/or closing dates for the museums listed below? The Mapping Museums research team have compiled data on around 4,000 UK museums, but we’re missing crucial information about the opening and closing dates of a few venues. We know that these venues existed, but sometimes have little more than a […]
The historic houses listed below are all open to the public; however, we don’t know when they opened to the public. Can you help us? If so, do please get in touch with the project director, Professor Fiona Candlin on f.candlin@bbk.ac.uk. Name of museum Town or City Postcode Year open? Status ACTON COURT Bristol BS37 […]
This museum occupies an old blacksmith’s forge which had been unused since 1953. The collection was begun by Doreen Hodson-Smith, a local resident, but it had outgrown her home. The forge was seen as a suitable venue for a museum to house the collection, and after refurbishment it opened in 1991. The old forge and […]
The Basket Museum is part of Coates, a willow business based on the Somerset Levels. Willow for basket making has been grown on the levels for centuries. The museum displays a variety of willow items including bushel baskets, tricycles and traps. Images via the museum.
David Mellor was a designer specialising in cutlery, although he also designed street furniture including bus stops and the traffic lights still in use in Britain today. The museum shares the site with a working cutlery factory, which occupies a new building on the site of Hathersage’s old village gasworks. Image via the museum.
Freddie Fox (1913-1990) inherited his father’s Dublin cigar business, and expanded it to an international concern. In 1992 JJ Fox acquired the older business of Robert Lewis, an eighteenth-century tobacco dealer based in St James’s, London. This museum devoted to smoking history is in the London shop’s basement.
Jamie Larkin The museums sector generally concentrates on current practice and developments; it does not keep longitudinal data that would enable academics and museum professionals to trace patterns over time. The result is that commentary on closure is focussed on the very recent past and lacks a broader perspective that could add insight to contemporary […]
The National Fencing Museum was established in 2002 in by Malcolm Fare, a fencer and fencing historian. It includes displays of fencing equipment, paintings, prints, books, and all kinds of ephemera. Image via the museum.
Patrick Cook, the founder and owner of the Bakelite Museum, started collecting plastic when he was an art student in London. Among other things, he used his collection to hold a series of Bakelite picnics, where the crowd ate food off Bakelite plates, drank tea from Bakelite cups, and listened to music played on Bakelite […]
Hopewell Colliery Museum is in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. Mining is an ancient tradition in the forest and those born there can exercise their rights to mine coal, iron ore, ochre and stone. The museum includes a working mine, through which visitors can take a guided tour. Image via the museum.
