Cumbriaʼs Military Museum

umbria‘s Museum of Military Life is Carlisle’s newest visitor attraction, telling the 300-year story of Cumbria’s County Infantry Regiment and its soldiers past and present.

Get closer to history, with a huge variety of items including uniforms, medals, weapons and silver as well as interactive displays and dioramas. This new state of the art exhibition features a First World War trench environment, immersive audio/visual displays and an interactive trail for young people.

The Museum is located right in the heart of historic Carlisle Castle.

Wandle Industrial Museum

The Wandle Industrial Museum in Mitcham is a riverside museum reflecting the rich heritage of of the Wandle Valley. The museum displays evidence which establishes that the River Wandle was, in its day, the most industrialised river in Europe.
In 1983 the Wandle Industrial Museum was established to help preserve the story of the river and the industries it helped to support. The museum is entirely run by volunteers.

Exhibitions concentrate on two of the Wandle’s better known industries, namely the snuff & tobacco and textile industries. The ‘Lost Mills of the Wandle’ exhibition tells the story of mills founded at Croydon, Carshalton, Mitcham, Merton, Wimbledon and Wandsworth. The museum also highlights Merton Priory, and has a display on the Surrey Iron Railway, a horse-drawn toll railway, which opened in 1802.

Surrey Infantry Museum

Following the amalgamation of The Queen’s Royal Regiment and the East Surrey Regiment in 1959, the ownership and management of museum artefacts and archives was vested in The Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment Museum Trust. Following the closure of Regimental Headquarters and Museum in the Keep at Kingston–upon–Thames the artefacts had to be put in store. Thanks to the efforts of Colonel JW Sewell agreement was reached with the National Trust for use of rooms in the basement at Clandon Park. The museum opened in 1981. Major upgrades took place in 2001 and 2011; the later with half funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. In the same year, the Museum Trustees concluded that it was in the best long term interests to merge with the Trustees of the museum of the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment and Queen’s Regiment. This took place on 1st July 2011. The museum was renamed: The Surrey Infantry Museum.

Armitt Museum and Library

Who are we, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopaedia; a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly reshuffled and reordered in every conceivable way.

(Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium)

The Armitt is a unique combination of museum, library and gallery devoted to preserving and sharing the cultural heritage of the Lake District.

Mary Louisa Armitt founded the Library to foster an exchange of ideas in the local community. The Library opened in 1912. More than a century later, we continue to support the spirit of enquiry in all that we do.

Beatrix Potter was one of the Armitt’s early supporters, and our collection holds a number of her family’s books as well as her personal first editions of the ‘little’ books. Her major gift however came in the form of a large number of exquisite botanical watercolours. At the centre of our exhibition ‘Beatrix Potter, Image and Reality’, these works reveal fascinating and lesser-known aspects of her life story.

Today, the Armitt is proud to house one of the country’s most important collections of artwork by Kurt Schwitters, who influenced the development of twentieth-century art and lived in Ambleside during his final years. In early 2016, generous support from the V&A Purchase Fund, the National Art Collections Fund, the Friends of the Armitt, and local donors allowed us to acquire a further five wonderful Schwitters paintings from his Ambleside years. All works are now on permanent display.

Bourne Hall Museum

Bourne Hall, situated in the heart of Ewell Village, is a remarkable modern building of unusual architectural interest, surrounded by beautiful grounds. Opened in 1970, it is well furnished, well equipped and flexible enough to accommodate most requirements.

With a variety of different sized halls and rooms, it is perfect for anything from a small meeting to the largest of receptions. It is used for conferences, weddings and wedding receptions, fairs, recitals, meetings and parties.

The landscaped gardens, lawns and lake, with a fountain, provide a wonderful backdrop for your events and are particularly impressive for photographs.

Bourne Hall has good parking facilities and is within easy reach of Central London and the M25. West Ewell British Rail Station is five minutes walk away and provides regular direct rail routes to Waterloo and Guildford. Local buses run to and from Ewell Village.

Pitstone Green Museum

The farm, as you see it today, was largely built by the Countess of Bridgewater

and is unusual in that it has been occupied by the Hawkins family since 1808,

before most of the farm was built in 1830. It was built close to the site of

earlier farms one of the old buildings still remain to this day. Most prominent

of these is the Big Barn, a section of which dates from the 17th century and was

transported to the site when the farm was built in the first half of the 19th century.

The Pitstone Local History Society was formed in 1963, later to become the Pitstone

& Ivinghoe Museum Society. Inspired by David Wray,they began collecting almost

anything associated with farming and rural life in the locality. The collection

was initially housed at Don Levy’s Vicarage Farm, Ivinghoe but then moved to

Pitstone Green Farm when further space was needed.

In 1991 a 99 year lease on the 1831 farm was granted to the Pitstone Local History

Society (now Pitstone & Ivinghoe Museum Society) by Jeff Hawkins , the then owner of

the farm. On the death of Jeff Hawkins in 2001, Pitstone Green Farm was gifted to the

National Trust and forms part of the Ashridge Estate. The Ashridge Estate comprises

5000 acres of beautiful countryside ranging from magnificent woods, commons, downland

and farmland which support a rich variety of wildlife, including carpets of bluebells

in spring, rare butterflies in summer and the fallow deer rut in autumn.

Ravenglass Railway Museum

The Ravenglass Railway Museum opened in 1978 to permanently display a collection of artefacts that had been exhibited at the centenary of the Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway (R&ER) in 1976. It was housed in the former Furness Railway platform shelter on Ravenglass main-line station. Between 2015-2017 it underwent a comprehensive re-development with assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Copeland Community Fund, Fisheries Local Action Group, Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway Preservation Society, Arts Council and Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway Company. The museum was re-designed throughout and extended with a train-shed which allowed the collection of locomotives and rolling stock to be displayed in stable conditions for the first time. On 24th June 2017 it was re-opened to the public by Paul Atterbury, railway author and star of the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow.

Ribble Steam Railway

The museum houses many locomotives and vehicles that have been restored by our volunteers on site. This is one of the largest collections in the country all under one roof. We have tried to show the different types and tell a short story about the previous lives of each covering where they were built, the industries that they worked in and other interesting facts.

So from our workshop to the museum and here you can get up close and even climb aboard a few to see the size of the footplate that drivers and firemen had to work aboard for many long shifts at work.

Also around the museum you will find other displays, some are permanent such as a History of Preston Dock to temporary displays on many interesting subjects. We are also always adding new displays such as Signalling and Mail in the NW as we have aquired a Travelling Post Office carriage.

Rural Life Centre

The Rural Life Centre began as a private collection of agricultural equipment, assembled by the late Madge and Henry Jackson, before opening to the public in 1973. The museum is now run by a charitable trust, the Old Kiln Museum Trust. Pleasantly distributed over ten acres of field, woodland and buildings, our exhibits  include a large number of implements and devices marking in excess of 150 years of farming. Many aspects of village and rural life, incuding many ‘rescued’ village buildings, are displayed in realistic individual settings.
There is so much to explore!

Agricultural Museum, Brook

The Wye Rural Museum Trust was formed in 1996 to take over the ownership of the Museum buildings and collections from the then Wye College (University of London) which is now Imperial College at Wye.

The formation and early activities of the Trust were under the leadership of the late Michael Nightingale of Cromarty, a well-know Kent activist in many fields including local history and environmental protection. As a student at Wye College in the late 1940’s he had been instrumental in bringing the foundation of the collections to Wye from East Malling Research Station where they had been stored for safety during the second World War.

With the help of a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and a number of corporate and private donations the Trust was able to buy the site and buildings from Wye College, which then gifted the collections to the Trust, which took formal control in May 1997.