Author: Mark Liebenrood

Postdoctoral Researcher

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Museum Snapshots

Torbay Aircraft Museum

Cover of a jigsaw of Torbay Aircraft Museum

What is the connection between the 1960s pop music TV show Ready, Steady, Go! and a long-lost aircraft museum in Devon?

The answer is Keith Fordyce, an ex-RAF serviceman who co-presented the show from 1963, and famously asked the Beatles if they thought they had a future. In 1971 he began restoring old aircraft, and later established the museum in Torbay. Amongst other aircraft the collection included replicas of the Spitfire and Hurricane. The museum closed in the late 1980s and the collection was dispersed.

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Museum Snapshots

Bear Gardens Museum

Bear Gardens Museum

According to Hudson and Nicholls’ Directory of Museums and Living Displays, the Bear Gardens Museum was in a Georgian warehouse standing on the original site of the Elizabethan bear baiting arena and the Hope Playhouse. Its displays illustrated the history of 16th and 17th-century playhouses, and included scale models.

As Bankside was on the south bank of the Thames and thus outside the jurisdiction of the 17th-century city of London, it was a popular site for all manner of entertainments including bear baiting and theatres. Shakespeare’s Globe theatre famously made its home there in 1599.

An image of the museum in 1976, close to the time of the exhibition poster above,  is available from the City of London Picture Archive:

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Museum Snapshots

Sandwich Doll Museum

Sandwich Doll Museum

As Fiona Candlin writes elsewhere on this site, one problem when researching small museums is that there may be very little information available about them. These two postcards are almost all we have of The Precinct Toy Collection, also known as The Sandwich Doll Museum. We can see that it contained Doll’s Houses, and another site suggests that it also had Noah’s Arks on show.

The site looks very different today, with the shop fronts removed and just a single entrance door in the centre of what was once the museum’s frontage. The Mapping Museums team always welcome more information about lost museums, so if you can tell us anything about this one, please get in touch.
Sandwich Doll Museum, also known as The Precinct Toy Collection, Harnet Street, Sandwich, Kent

Images kindly provided by the Sandwich Local History Society.

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Museum Snapshots

Send and Ripley Museum

Send and Ripley Museum

Museums may move in different ways. Sometimes collections are transferred to different sites, and occasionally get renamed in the process. Others are completely itinerant, such as the Museum of Water. But the premises of Send and Ripley Museum had to move even before it could be used as a museum.

This building was formerly a branch of National Westminster Bank in the village of Ripley in Surrey. It was offered to the Send and Ripley Historical Society on the condition that it be moved to another site. In a small feat of logistics, the building was moved in one piece on the back of a lorry to its present location, where it now functions as the museum of the Society.

The displays include geological specimens, photographs, and a locally made WW2 air raid shelter.

Image from Send and Ripley Historical Society.

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Museum Snapshots

Telecom Technology Showcase

Telecom Technology Showcase

The Telecom Technology Showcase was open between 1982 and 1997 and run by British Telecom. It occupied premises in Baynard House, Blackfriars, which is still owned by BT. The museum’s opening was specially timed: 1982 was Information Technology Year in the UK. BT had been created just two years earlier and separated from the Post Office in 1981 before being privatised in 1984.

Amongst the educational and interactive displays were the design classic K6 telephone kiosk, old telephones, a switchboard, and a working exchange rack. This was just a small portion of BT’s large archive, which included vintage GPO vans, bakelite handsets, numerous telephones and switchboards.

Museums advertise themselves in various ways, and the Technology Showcase used a medium that was distinctly relevant to it: BT Phonecards. These cards were a way of prepaying for calls from phone boxes, and featured a wide variety of products and services, including the BT Museum.

telecom showcase bt phonecard

The museum had 23,000 visitors in 1995 but closed two years later. It was reported to be losing around £500,000 a year.

Images via Light Straw.

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Museum Snapshots

Dufftown Whisky Museum

Dufftown Whisky Museum

 

The Whisky Museum is in Dufftown, Speyside, which claims to be “Malt Whisky Capital of the World”. Sited on the banks of the river Fiddich, Dufftown was at one time home to nine whisky distilleries with six currently active, including the well known Glenfiddich.

The museum was opened in 2002 by Charles MacLean, a prolific writer on whisky. Its exhibits include illicit stills and other tools and equipment used for whisky manufacture. The museum was forced to vacate its first site in 2009 and has plans to expand its current small premises.

Image from Dufftown Whisky Museum.

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Museum Snapshots

The Ark Museum

The Ark Museum

The Ark is the oldest building in active use in Tadcaster, Yorkshire. Built in the late 15th Century, it is reputed to have been used by the Pilgrim Fathers to meet when planning their voyage to America. As well as a meeting place, at different times the Ark has been used as a post office, an inn, a butchers, a private house and a museum. Its name derives from two carved corbel figures on the exterior which are said to be Noah and his wife.

It housed a museum of local and brewing history, owned by John Smith’s brewery, but the museum closed in 1989. The collections were dispersed to a variety of places including Doncaster Museum, the Castle Museum in York, and private collections. Today the building is in use as council offices.

More information at Visit Tadcaster.

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Museum Snapshots

Museum of British Transport

Museum of British Transport

The Museum of British Transport opened in an old bus garage in Clapham, south London, in the 1960s. Standing in the forecourt was a replica of Rocket, the pioneering locomotive designed by Robert Stephenson. The museum housed objects and vehicles relating to London’s roads, railways and the Tube. The collection had been started in the 1920s by the London General Omnibus Company, which decided to preserve two Victorian horse buses and an early motorbus.

In 1969 the museum was losing £30,000 a year and threatened with closure. It moved to Syon Park in 1973 as the London Transport Collection. The collection was eventually divided between the National Railway Museum in York and London’s Transport Museum, which opened in 1980 in a Victorian flower market building in Covent Garden.

Image taken in 1966 and © National Railway Museum and SSPL, from National Railway Museum. There are more photos of the museum in 1965 on Flickr.

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Museum Snapshots

House of Wax

House of Wax

 

The Louis Tussauds House of Wax in Great Yarmouth was run by Peter and Jane Hays for 58 years. Opened in 1954 and named after Madame Tussaud’s great grandson, it featured models of celebrities and historical figures. But faced with rising costs, declining income, and the loss of the wax modeller they had used, the Hays closed the museum in 2012. When the closure was announced they were praised for their contribution to local tourism. The exhibits were sold to a Czech collector in 2014.

Image via Eastern Daily Press.

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Museum Snapshots

Adamston Agricultural Museum

Adamston Agricultural Museum

 

The Adamston Agricultural Museum was opened in 1972 by Hew McCall-Smith. His collection comprised more than 500 items related to farming and domestic life in the North East of Scotland. This included ploughs, horse harness, and dairy equipment. McCall-Smith also organised events, including exhibits of threshing, ploughing, and cheese-making.

The museum remained open until the early 1980s, when the collection was purchased by Moray District Council and incorporated into Aden, the North East of Scotland Agricultural Centre (now known as the Aberdeenshire Farming Museum).

More information about these museums can be found in An Introduction to Scottish Ethnology by Alexander Fenton.

Image via Deeside Books.