Museum – Page 3 – My Days Out Blog

78 Derngate, Northampton

The house at 78 Derngate, Northampton, was transformed by the Glasgow architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh from a modest Victorian terraced house to a building with unique modern designs. The client was W.J. Bassett-Lowke, founder of a prosperous local model-making and engineering business.
The transformation was carried out in 1916-17. The Bassett-Lowkes moved on nine years later, and the house passed through various hands before the Northampton Borough Council obtained a 999-year lease in 1996. The house was Grade II* listed in 1965. Full restoration was undertaken in 2001.
The adjoining house, no 80, was included in the project and stripped out to provide modern access and exhibition space. (In old photos, no 80 appears to have a 2-storey high bay on the front).
No 82, also now interconnected, contains gallery space and a dining room/cafe.
The house was jointly designed by Mackintosh and his client. Inside, the basement kitchen was very modern for its day. Upstairs at street level the dining room looks modestly modern, while the hall/lounge looks nearly as bizarre as the photo below suggests. Most surfaces are finished in black, with a coloured frieze applied to the walls, and black furniture. The staircase is turned through 90 deg from its original (and more conventional) position, and is divided off by a lattice screen, also painted black at this level.
At first floor level are the principal bedroom and the bathroom. The bedroom is relatively conventional, and has a balcony. The bathroom was modern in its day and is papered with a washable mosaic design.
On the second floor are a study, repainted in the original colours, and the guest bedroom, which has a striking fabric backdrop to the twin beds which continues up the ceiling.

The house has been restored to its 1917 appearance. Some features are original. Some of the lost original features are replaced by near-equivalents which differ slightly from the originals, and the installation of furniture (usually replicas) seems to be a work in progress.

If you are interested in Mackintosh’s work, or modern design, this house is definitely worth a visit.

Nearby: The Museum & Art gallery, the Guildhall, and St Peter’s Church.

Getting there: there are multi-storey car parks for the Derngate theatres etc. Northampton railway station is a 20 min walk away.

Hall/lounge, front door — Hall, front door

The Higgins Gallery and Museum, Bedford

The Bedford museum and art gallery opened in mid-2013 after a major refurbishment and extension, and has been re-branded as the Higgins. The galleries, upstairs and downstairs, are extensive, and a full tour takes several hours. Galleries include art, local archaeology, local industries, ethnographic collections, natural history, Arts and Crafts movement furniture and artefacts, temporary exhibitions and, the prize of the collection, the Burges Room, containing painted furniture by the Victorian designer.
The museum buildings incorporate the original Victorian mansion built for Bedford industrialists the Higgins family, but having had various parts demolished or knocked through over the decades to adapt the buildings for museum use, the mansion has lost much of its original character. Furniture and contents typical of the period have been placed in the principal rooms.
If the purpose of your visit is to see the Burges Room, it is advisable to ask for directions. A number of important pieces of painted furniture, some from Burges’ last residence, the Tower House, are placed around the walls of an artificially lit space. The adjoining spaces and galleries contain the museum’s collections of Arts & Crafts furniture and artefacts from the Victorian and Edwardian period.
A visit is recommended, especially if you are interested in high Victoriana and the Arts & Crafts movement.
If you need a refreshment break during your visit, the Higgins Pantry with waitress service is available next to the entrance.
The Higgins is in the centre of the town, within walking distance of Bedford & Bedford St Johns railway stations. Parking in the area is restricted, and could be difficult on a Saturday, when the weekly Bedford auction is held nearby.

Foundling Museum, London

Museum
The Foundling Hospital was founded by Thomas Coram in the 18th century to care for abandoned children, generally babies whose mothers were too poor to care for them. Early patrons included the painter Hogarth and the musician George Friderik Handel. The Hospital soon acquired an art collection which attracted visits from prospective benefactors.

The Hospital buildings occupied land which is now mostly the open space in front of the Museum building. In 1926 the Hospital moved outside London and within a fairly short time morphed from a residential institution into a charity, the remaining children being placed in foster homes and the Rickmansworth building being sold in 1954. The Hospital became the children’s charity, Coram.

The present building in London was built in 1937 as the London headquarters of the Hospital, but by 1998 became a Museum housing the physical relics and collections of the Hospital.
Today, the building contains an exhibition about the Foundling Hospital, an art collection, and some room interiors salvaged from the old Hospital, as well as the Handel collection.

The general visitor will find the exhibition about the Foundling Hospital of considerable interest. Some of the paintings are portraits of long-dead worthies, but there are also interesting Victorian paintings depicting the workings of the Hospital in a popular sentimental style. The Court Room, with its ornate ceiling and 18th century doorcases and interior, wall-paintings and hung paintings, is a most impressive room salvaged from the old Hospital and recreated in the 1937 building.
The Museum is open most days (except Mondays). There is an admission charge, with a concession for NT members. Nearest Tube station is Russell Square.

Submarine Museum, Gosport, Hampshire.

The Royal Navy Submarine Museum offers a guided tour of one full-size submarine, HMS Alliance, plus exhibits of several small or miniature submarines, including the very early Holland 1 and a well-preserved X24 minature submarine. There are museum galleries depicting submarine operations, with plenty of audio-visual, and a collection of weapons systems control panels as used for launching missiles, plus a Trident rocket.
The admission fee is significant but worth it if you are interested in submarine warfare. If you’ve never been inside a submarine you may be surprised at how little free space there is and how every square foot of bulkhead is covered with pipes, cables, or equipment.
Visit time ~3.5 hours.

Visiting: It might be worth looking at online mapping to see where you are going before setting off (they say a picture is worth 1000 words.) It’s easy to drive past the entrance without spotting it. The site is on the Haslar Road, a few yards past the end of a single-lane bridge that spans part of the harbour, but there is no in-your-face signage, and sat-nav will probably deliver you to an adjacent site, e.g. Fort Blockhouse which is about 100 yards further on.
The site can be reached by ferry from the Historic Dockyard area which is quite close as the crow flies. The ferry seems rather pricey, but the land access alternative goes through miles of congested built-up area.

Historic Dockyard, Portsmouth

The Historic Dockyard is on the waterfront and next to the working Royal Navy dockyard. The ticketing reflects the presence there of several major attractions, and you can elect to buy a ticket for one, or the whole lot. The all-attractions tickets are much better value for money, but this assumes you are staying in the area and can visit on two or three days.
The major attractions are:
HMS Warrior: One of the very few surviving ‘transition’ warships, with an iron hull, armour plate, and a steam engine, but also rows of cast-iron cannon* poking out of gunports, and masts and sails. She made all previous battleships obsolete, but was soon superseded. Visit time ~1.5 hours.

HMS Victory: Admiral Nelson, Battle of Trafalgar: need I say more? Classic wooden battleship with 3 decks of cannon. Visit time ~1.25 hours.

Mary Rose: Now in a new-for-2013 museum which displays some of the 19,000 artefacts alongside the half-ship. The museum is on three levels. Artefacts such as cannon are displayed in their proper positions opposite the Mary Rose’s decks and there are museum galleries with more artefacts and exposition at the ends. Includes cases of the only Tudor longbows you’ll see anywhere. Fascinating. New for July 2016: the bulky pipework and the barrier with small windows have been removed, offering an unobstructed view of the ship. On the topmost level, above the glass barrier there is nothing between you and the ship. Every few minutes the lights dim, and dioramas of the crew at work or in action are projected onto the hull. Visit time ~3 hours.

Harbour Cruise: A cruise around the harbour, taking you past whichever of the Royal Navy’s ships are in port at the time. I saw a (or is that ‘the’) carrier, and three Daring-class destroyers, plus sundry other warships. Time: ~45 mins.

Royal Naval Museum: Seems to be confined to the age of sail, and Trafalgar.

Other attractions: There are several other things (see the official website.)
Monitor M33: In a drydock near the Victory. You can now see around the restored interior of this ship. See separate entry for M33.

Travel: It’s easy to get right into Portsmouth by car along the motorway. You could park at the convenient but expensive pay-on-exit multi-storey car park near the Historic Dockyard, but it is less stressful and just as convenient to use the Portsmouth Park & Ride.
The Portsmouth railway station is actually on the harbour nearby.

Jutland 2016 Exhibition (temporary): An optional extra in the ticketing scheme. Worth a look if you know little about this important battle. A fair number of small artifacts are on display, and there are some video clips and survivor accounts.

*mostly fibreglass replicas.

Wallace Collection, London

The Wallace Collection is a national museum in an historic London town house. In 25 galleries are unsurpassed displays of French 18th century painting, furniture and porcelain with superb Old Master paintings and a world class armoury.
The Wallace Collection is a family collection in origin, and is now owned by a private trust. Hertford House was formerly owned by the Wallace family. Its works of art were collected between about 1760 and 1880 by the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the son of the 4th Marquess.
To the visitor, Hertford House seems like a combination of stately home and museum. In addition to the grand rooms, parts of the building that formerly housed stables etc have been converted to museum galleries.
The collections are world class and include well-known paintings such as the ‘Laughing Cavalier’ and ‘Girl on a Swing’, fine furniture, including several pieces that belonged to Marie Antoinette, fine porcelain and other art objects, and a large collection of medieval and Oriental arms and armour.
With one piece of furniture reputedly being worth several million pounds, one could guess that to repurchase the collection at today’s prices would cost the equivalent of the national debt!
I left the Collection unvisited for many years because it gets little publicity, and I supposed that a private collection would be rather dull – an impression that turned out to be totally wrong.
Admission is free, but you can buy a useful guidebook for £5. If you don’t know where to start, take the Highlights Tour (free).
For meals and snacks, there is a restaurant in the courtyard, but some visitors may find it a bit pricey (a cold drink and cake cost me nearly £6).
Visit time – to see everything takes most of a day. Nearest Tubes are Bond Street and Baker Street, but a bus will drop you nearer.

Quarry Bank Mill, Cheshire

National Trust.
The Mill was started in the 18th century and remained in the ownership of the Greg family for five generations. The business closed in the 1950’s. The workers, housed nearby, included children as young as nine, and unpaid pauper apprentices. The cotton was cheap because it was produced by slaves in the southern United States. The mill was powered by water-wheels, and later by steam.
The original mill building contains exhibitions and representative old spinning and weaving machines, which can be seen running (noisy!). The machines were originally powered by water or steam power (latterly electricity), and in the lower levels a working restored water wheel and some working steam engines can be seen. It’s interesting to see what impact the production of cotton cloth had (social change, industrialisation, riots) and what ingenuity went into producing a piece of cloth.
Beyond the mill, the Quarry Bank garden and kitchen garden can be seen. Further afield are the Apprentice House and the Styal Village (not seen).
This is an interesting site, and a proper visit will occupy about half a day.

Quarry Bank spinning machine — Spinning machine

Kew Bridge Steam Museum, London

Kew Bridge Standpipe Tower — Museum landmark

Museum
The Kew Bridge Steam Museum dubs itself ‘London’s Museum of Water Supply’. It is housed in the historic premises of the former Grand Junction Water Works Company. Several of the Company’s beam pumping engines are in their original positions. As the number of engines was increased over the years to meet demand, the engines are diverse, rather than being a matched set, as at, e.g. Crossness. The Museum also houses several collected steam pumping engines from elsewhere, and one original and several collected diesel pump engines.
The 90 inch and 100 inch engines (original) are so big that the visitor is obliged to stand inside the engine mechanism rather than beside it.
The tower is not a chimney, but contains a pressure-balancing water standpipe.
Most of the engines are in working order, and a selection of them can be seen running on ‘steam’ weekends. It’s worth going on a weekend when the engines are being run in turn, if you can. I spent over four hours at the site on my visit.
If you are interested in steam power and industrial archaeology this is well worth a visit.
The Museum is a few minutes’ walk from Kew Bridge railway station. On-site parking is limited.

Kew Bridge Triple Expansion Engine — Triple Expansion eng.

Kew Bridge- James Kay 'Dancers End' eng. — James Kay eng.

Kew Bridge, 100" engine cylinder top view — 100" eng.

Kew bridge, 100" engine beam — 100" eng. beam

Kew bridge Boulton & Watt engine cylinder top view — Boulton & Watt

London Transport Museum

The London Transport Museum, Covent Garden, is devoted to the history of London Transport. As well as storing and displaying historic vehicles, it informs about the history and development of the Tube and bus services, and the former tramway and trolley-bus services. Social history is also strongly presented, and the impact of the suburban railway services on the sprawl of London. It was mainly the poor who were displaced (and not re-housed) when large acreages were cleared to make way for railway cuttings, stations and depots.

A visit starts at the top of the building, with a sedan chair and horse-drawn buses. The next level down is devoted to the steam underground and the growth of the suburbs, and across a walkway is an area for temporary exhibitions. The main floor has a variety of exhibits including motor buses, Underground vehicles, the Underground at war etc.

During my visit there was a temporary exhibition of Underground posters, many being of artistic merit.

Exhibits of note: Steam loco designed for underground working. Two early electric locos. ‘General’ early motor bus.

The Museum is of medium size – it took me 3 to 3 1/2 hours to see almost everything. The admission charge seems on the high side at £15 for adults. Almost all displays are in English only. Access: most visitors will come by public transport. Nearest tube is Covent Garden, but if you travel by Northern line, it’s probably not worth the bother of changing lines to travel the short distance to Covent Garden and then queuing for the lifts – just walk the 1/4 mile up Long Acre instead. From Covent Garden tube station, the Museum is almost on the far side of the Piazza – walk round clockwise and you’ll see it.

Cherryburn, Northumberland

National Trust
This site is of interest as being the small farm where Thomas Bewick, Northumberland’s greatest artist and wood engraver, lived and worked. He is best known for books containing a set of accurate engravings of British birds. There are two exhibition rooms, and across the farmyard is the house where Bewick lived, with recreations of two rooms. Most of his work was engraved on boxwood, which is only available in small pieces, so many of the engravings are of eye-straining smallness.
The Print Room has the original printing equipment and racks of typefaces, and a small display of prints. There is a short video presentation.

This is worth a visit if you are already interested in Bewick or are in the area.