Bolton Museum and Art Gallery

Bolton Museum is a public museum and art gallery in the town of Bolton, Greater Manchester, northern England, owned by Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council.

The collections include natural history, archaeology, art, local history and one of Britain’s oldest public aquariums. These are housed, together with Bolton Central Library, in one end of the Bolton Civic Centre, designed by, local architects, Bradshaw Gass & Hope and opened in 1939. The museum has two outlying locations, Smithills Hall and Hall i’ th’ Wood.

The collections include material from many private collectors, including geological specimens from the estate of Caroline Birley.

In 2006, the museum became involved in the Shaun Greenhalgh case, when a statue in their collection, the Amarna Princess, was revealed as a forgery.

The Bolton Lives gallery presents the story of Bolton and its people.

Smithills Hall

Set in 2,000 acres of land on the edge of the West Pennine Moors, Smithills Hall is one of the oldest and best preserved manor houses in the North West of England.

Over the years the original Medieval Hall has been added to, and provides a fascinating history of the people who lived there. The buildings include Tudor and Victorian wings, in addition to the Medieval Hall, and a private Chapel. The private chapel, reputedly established in AD 792, was rebuilt about 1520 by Andrew Barton and maintained by the families who lived there.  It has subsequently been added to, refurbished, suufered a major fire and restored . It remains a consecrated church.

The land on which Smithills Hall stands has been owned by, amongst others, Roger de Poictou, the Knights Templars, Richard de Hulton, and William de Radcliffe who built the current medieval hall (originally entirely timber framed) in the 14th Century. Numerous families have loved and maintained the buildings through the following generations.

It is now owned by the people of Bolton through their Council with whom the Friends of Smithills Hall work in partnership.

Guildhall Museum

The Guildhall building is believed to date from the late 14th century. Its upper floors project out in the usual fashion of timber-framed structures. The building was extensively renovated in 1978-9, but much early timber-work survives, as do wattle-and-daub internal walls.

The ground floor of the building is occupied by a private business. There is no evidence that this was ever an open structure; it seems to have functioned for various types of trading from at least the sixteenth century, and possibly throughout its existence.

The present Museum entrance and staircase are of relatively modern date and the upper floors were probably accessed originally from Fisher Street.

The open roof structure shows two markedly dissimilar types of construction, although dendrochronological study has revealed that all the timber dates from the time the building was originally constructed. There is virtually no documentary evidence of the construction or early structure of the Guildhall, and the earliest illustrations are of 19th century date. Detailed investigation of the structure of the building has recently been undertaken by English Heritage and Carlisle City Council, and should help to resolve many unanswered questions.

Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery

Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery is Carlisle’s finest visitor attraction, and houses considerable collections of fine and decorative art, human history and natural sciences.  It also boasts a wide range of  exhibitions and events, brought together in one impressive museum and art gallery.

Being the premier attraction in the North West means that Tullie House is recognised for its first class customer service, and for exciting, varied events and exhibitions programmes.

A fusion of old and new awaits you, from the beautiful Old Tullie House, a classical Grade One Listed Jacobean building to the Border Galleries, full of exciting exhibits and interactive displays.

There is something for everyone at Tullie House. Children and adults of all ages will find fun, hands-on exhibits and even games: fire a Roman weapon, climb our life-sized section of Hadrian’s Wall or visit the badgers’ sett!.

A changing programme of temporary exhibitions compliments our permanent displays; contemporary arts are featured in the purpose-built Art Gallery, and exhibitions inspired by our own collections or the local community appear in the Special Exhibitions Gallery upstairs.

The Dock Museum

Built in a historic nineteenth century dock, the museum is home to a wealth of objects on the social and industrial history of the Furness area.  Barrow-in-Furness was a small farming village rapidly transformed into a bustling industrial town within a few decades.  It has been the cutting edge of technology for more than a century with submarines, airships, warships and beautiful liners being built in this little-explored town.  Find out more about the fascinating heritage of the area from cave finds, Viking treasure, Victorian life, Anderson shelters and the Second World War as well as Barrow’s long history building vessels (and still building submarines today).

We have a landscaped site and Channelside walks linking to the Cumbria Coastal Way.

Peter Scott Gallery

Lancaster’s Peter Scott Gallery presents a varied programme of temporary exhibitions and associated talks. Admission is free of charge and everyone is welcome. The art gallery holds the most significant collection of Royal Lancastrian ceramics in Britain, which is on permanent display in the John Chambers Ceramics Room.

The gallery houses Lancaster University’s international art collection, which includes Japanese and Chinese art, antiquities, works by twentieth century British artists and prints by significant European artists such as Dürer, Miró, Ernst and Vasarely.

The collection is not on permanent display but a number of works are shown every year as part of changing exhibitions. Please contact the gallery for information about works currently on display or to view items by appointment.

Oriel Ynys Môn

The Museum invites you to appreciate the history of Anglesey and its people, its formation and development, and most impressive of all, its heritage and habitats.

You will discover an introduction to Anglesey’s history. Find out about the island’s visitors both past and present, the industries that put Anglesey on the map, the wealth of archaeological discoveries, the tragic shipwrecks, and the hunters who gradually changed their way of life to become the first farmers of Anglesey.

Penrith and Eden Museum

The seeds were sown for the establishment of a museum in the town with the founding of the Mechanic’s Institute in 1830 when Harrison Wilkinson, a surgeon in the Royal Navy and a native of Penrith, left in his will ‘all the books comprising his library, all his coins, medals, and casts, for use of all the inhabitants of the town of Penrith for ever, without alienation by sale or otherwise’. When the Mechanics Institute was dissolved the collections were passed on to the Working Men’s Reading Room, whose assets were in turn transferred to the Penrith Museum.

The Penrith Local Board of Health (the town’s first municipal governing body, forerunner of Penrith Urban District Council incorporated in 1974 into Eden District Council in local government reorganisation) had adopted the Free Libraries and Museums Act in November 1881, the first public authority in Cumberland to do so. By 1883 the Penrith Free Public Library and Museum was duly established in the Working Men’s Reading Room in Hunter Lane. At the opening the chairman of the Local Board said that he had no doubt the Museum would be ‘a useful institution generally, and … more particularly to the young people of the town.’ That a significant amount of the Free Museum’s original collection has survived to the present day is due in part to the local authority assuming the role of patron at this early stage in the Museum’s history.

It is not coincidental that the Library and Museum came into being shortly after the establishment of the Penrith Literary and Scientific Society whose prospectus of July 1881 anticipated the idea of a museum. Its President, Doctor Michael Waistell Taylor (1842-1892) a physician of repute in the town (and one of the founders and an early President of the Hunterian Medical Society) had been largely responsible for persuading the Local Board to adopt the Free Libraries and Museums Act. The interest and enthusiasm of many of the Society’s members found a focus in the new development, and it was in keeping with this convergence of interest that Dr Taylor became the Museum’s first Honorary Curator. He was a keen amateur archaeologist and naturalist (his herbarium collection is still preserved as part of the Museum’s collections) and author of The Old Manorial Halls of Westmorland and Cumberland.

In 1894 the local historian William Furness informs us how ‘the foundation of the Museum was made by the valuable geological collection of Vice-Admiral Wauchope of Dacre Lodge, presented to the town through Dr M W Taylor, with the condition attached that they should receive suitable accommodation and be preserved for public use’. Furness lists the contents of the Museum collection which in that year comprised not only the Wauchope bequest of 27 cases of geological specimens and the herbarium of British flora donated by Dr Taylor, but also archaeological finds including a ‘Celtic’ stone axe found at Redhills, old coins, shells, birds, butterflies, corals and medallion plaster casts of celebrities. The list also includes ethnographic specimens such as Maori female dresses and Red Indian implements of war, and an Egyptian mummy and case. The mummy was given to Darlington Museum in 1930 then transferred in 1961 to the Oriental Museum at Durham University, where it is now on display. Also on loan at Durham is the collection of Oriental antiquities bequeathed to the museum in 1955.

In 1906, supported with funding from the Carnegie Trust, the Library and Museum moved to the recently converted Penrith Town Hall in Corney Square. By then the  role of Honorary Curator had passed to J. Charles Varty-Smith, a local gentleman described by his obituarist as ‘possessed by taste and knowledge far above the ordinary’ and a ‘born collector, antiquary, entomologist, botanist and connoisseur of old china and rare and out-of-the-way objects of art’. A man of means and leisure, Varty-Smith was a pioneer researcher on old glass and a frequent contributor to illustrated magazines such as The Queen, Country Life, Home and Garden and The Connoisseur. He and his daughters made a number of important gifts to the Museum such as the multure dishes used for collecting tolls at the town’s market.

Pontypridd Museum

Housed in a converted chapel built in 1861, Pontypridd Museum tells the history of Pontypridd and its people through a variety of exhibitions.

The converted Welsh Baptist Chapel situated next to Pontypridd’s iconic Edward’s Bridge (known locally as the Old Bridge) houses working models of nearby canals, mines and railways, archived film and voice records of the history of the area, historical objects and a magnificent pipe organ which is still used for recitals.

Among the exhibitions is an audio visual programme which explains the origins of the chapels and traces the influence of Welsh Dissent at home and overseas. There is a large panoramic painting showing the town and the surrounding area as it would have appeared 150 years ago and a section on the musical history of the town, in which a life size figure of famous entertainer Sir Geraint Evans stands dressed to sing ‘Falstaff.’

Hedon Museum

Hedon Museum is an active presence in the community. Members of the Museum have been reaching out to local people with the Memory Box Project since 2015, helping people to remember their oldest and most beloved moments.

The Museum is very proud to cater to all ages. There have always been items available to play with, but in 2016 we created the Children’s Corner. This entire portion of the room downstairs has been dedicated to historic items that can be touched, played with and enjoyed by children and their guardians alike. This area will evolve over time to create an interesting and engaging space.

The community itself has run Hedon Museum since it opened in 1996. It is run entirely by friendly and welcoming volunteers from the local area, and we are always looking for enthusiastic new people to help us keep the Museum going. If you are interested just pop in on any opening day and ask the volunteer on duty.