University of Aberdeen – Zoology Museum

The museum’s displays are worldwide in scope, from protozoa to the great whales, including taxidermy, skeletal material, study skins, fluid-preserved specimens and models. Visitors are warmly welcomed to the museum, and there is no charge for admission, though we ask that children are accompanied by a responsible adult.

Bate Collection of Musical Instruments, University of Oxford

Welcome to the Bate Collection, one of the most magnificent collections of musical instruments in the world. The Bate has over 2000 instruments from the Western orchestral music traditions from the renaissance, through the baroque, classical, romantic and up to modern times.  More than a thousand instruments are on display, by all the most important makers and from pre-eminent collectors.

Oakwell Hall Country Park

Oakwell Hall is furnished as a family home in the 1690s and offers visitors a real insight into a post-English Civil War household. The site also includes over 100 acres of country park, a visitor centre, gift shop, nature trail, picnic sites and playgound.

Huddersfield Art Gallery

See a selection of stunning paintings and sculptures by internationally renowned artists such as L.S. Lowry, Francis Bacon and Henry Moore alongside work by significant local artists.

Dean Forest Railway Museum

Our 4 1/2 mile line runs through beautiful woodland and countryside offering visitors a chance to experience the relaxing pace of a typical country branch line. With our 5 stations along the way you’ll have time to explore the local area, taking in woodland walks and country pubs or venturing down to the Severn estuary to explore Lydney Harbour with its fantastic views across the Severn.

William Lamb Sculpture Studio

Artist and sculptor William Lamb was born in Montrose, in 1893.

Lamb sculpted many society figures – including the Queen Mother and both Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret, as young girls. Lamb’s main body of work was inspired by the everyday people and places around Montrose.

The William Lamb Studio was designed by Lamb himself and has been preserved much as it was when he worked there. It houses a collection of his sculptures, prints and drawings. If you visit, you can also see his workroom, with tools, and his living room, featuring self-styled furniture.

Islington Museum

Our centre holds over 100,000 items on the history of the borough and we aim to keep anything that helps reflect life in Islington past and present.

Montrose Museum

The museum tells the story of Montrose and its people – from the earliest archaeological finds to the gallant Marquis of Montrose and the Jacobite uprisings, to the harbour and maritime trade. The museum hosts works from Angus Council’s collections of paintings and sculptures, as cared for by ANGUSalive, visiting artist exhibition and offers afternoon talks, children’s activities and occasional evening events.

Opening in 1842, by Montrose Natural History and Antiquarian Society, the museum was one of the first purpose-built museums in Scotland and houses a series of displays in the neo-classical building’s spacious atrium, mezzanine and galleries and was designed to look like a true temple of learning, with iconic columns on either side of the doorway and MUSEUM written above the lintel in elegant gold lettering.

Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft

We thought that the place in England that had the greatest vitality of thought and action in craftsmanship was probably the small village of Ditchling…just north of the Downs near the coast at Brighton.” – Bernard Leach in conversation with Shoji Hamada

The museum holds an internationally important collection of work by the artists and craftspeople who were drawn to the village, including the sculptor, wood engraver, type-designer and letter-cutter Eric Gill, the calligrapher Edward Johnston (responsible for the famous Johnston typeface used for London Underground), the painter David Jones, the printer Hilary Pepler and the weaver Ethel Mairet.

Being able to see special objects and works of art and craft in the village where they were made is a rare opportunity. It offers a unique way to consider how the objects were made and who they were made for.

The impact of the many artists and craftspeople who came to live and work in Ditchling from the beginning of the 20th century onwards established this village as one of the most important places for the visual arts and crafts in Britain.

Stanley Spencer Gallery

Cookham was very important to Stanley Spencer, he called it ‘a Village in Heaven’ and it was an endless source of artistic inspiration throughout his life. After his death in 1959 friends and patrons determined to find a permanent home within the village in which to display paintings and drawings that would serve as a memorial to the artist. Those involved in the project included Joan George who lived for a time in the artist’s former house Fernlea and became the first honorary secretary, Gerard Shiel a solicitor and local collector of Spencer’s works, Donald Rademacher a former director of the John Lewis Partnership, and the Rev Michael Westropp vicar of Cookham who had extended hospitality to Spencer in his last years. In 1962 the Gallery opened within the former Wesleyan Chapel in the High Street which Spencer had attended as a child with his mother. In the catalog for the opening exhibition Lord Astor, a patron of Spencer and founder of the Gallery wrote:

This Gallery is in its nature modest. It can only show a selection of Stanley Spencer’s pictures though they will vary each year. But perhaps a great edifice would be less typical of Stanley than this Gallery which is in scale with the rest of the village and reflects the nature of Stanley; small, cheerful, very special and deeply loved.

On show were many lent works, a number of which now form a part of the permanent collection, including the monumental painting Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta, left unfinished at Spencer’s death. The practical arrangements of the hanging were supervised by Spencer’s former agent Dudley Tooth. The artist’s daughters Shirin and Unity attended the exhibition and have been great supporters of the Gallery over the years. The Gallery was then opened to the public, at first run by a full-time paid custodian but latterly run at every level very successfully by a team of volunteers.