Small museums in Britain are the real national treasures | UK | News (Reports)

SLOWLY but surely, small local museums across the UK are re-opening – and they can pack a mighty cultural punch as good as any of the big national institutions. Next week, one of the top little big-hitters, the award-winning Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM), in Exeter, is throwing open its doors to the public. It’s just one of several small museums around the UK that add to the surprising pleasures of UK staycations – especially in the autumn months.

From stuffed elephants to ships’ figureheads; from blast furnaces to tattered regimental flags, we can take pride in some of the best museums in the world.

Splendidly, unapologetically old fashioned but with a modern twist, the RAMM is in fact several collections within one exquisite Victorian building.

“I can’t think of many other places in Britain,” says senior collections officer Julien Parsons, “where you can see an ancient Egyptian mummy, a giraffe, African masks, the fossilised bones of giant sea reptiles and contemporary art all within the blink of an eye.”

Launched in 1868 as a living memorial to Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, it embodied his love of science, art and knowledge.

Bringing together the private collections of explorers and eccentrics, it demonstrates how museums can give local communities unprecedented access to objects from all around the globe.

It truly is the treasure house of empire? but in a good way.

“The Victorians can seem bewildering to us today,” says Mr Parsons.

“Why spend a lifetime shooting big game or killing rare beetles? We need to try to understand their perspective on the world, and the creatures and cultures they encountered.”

To that end, Exeter’s famous stuffed giraffe Gerald is put in the context of the life of safari enthusiast Charles Peel, who viewed hunting as a manly challenge.

A black and white photograph shows him next to some of the animal skins he sent home.

We now have different views on preserving wildlife, but at the time that he donated his trophies this was one of the only ways young people could see exotic animals up close, inspiring a life-time’s enthusiasm for nature.

Biologist Percy Sladen, the son of a wealthy leather merchant, had a passion for studying echinoderms – that’s starfish and sea urchins – and gave his world-leading collection of specimens to the RAAM in 1904.

Recreating his home study packed with jars and bottles of strange creatures, it now looks more like something dreamed up by Damien Hirst.

Recently redecorated, with galleries in vivid colours, starting with a bright pink in the entrance hall, it’s no surprise this sophisticated

Yet another little museum punching way above its weight is the Victorian manor house and estate containing the American Museum and Gardens, just outside the city of Bath.

It stems from another private collection, this time put together by American oil heir Dallas Pratt and his antiques dealer partner John Judkyn.

With a fortune to spend, they bought entire interiors of historic homes in the USA, complete with all their furniture, and reassembled them in the British countryside.

In an afternoon, you can stroll from a cosy, wood-panelled Puritan home of the 17th century to a sumptuous, gothic New Orleans bedroom on the eve of the American Civil War.

“Our visitors relish the fact that we are unique,” says museum director Richard Wendorf. “The only American museum outside the United States. And we now have an extensive set of gardens designed and planted in American horticultural styles – with a newly added Children’s Garden.”

First US President George Washington was renowned for his garden at Mount Vernon and this has been gloriously recreated on a Somerset hillside, complete with giant pumpkins ready for autumn’s Halloween and Thanksgiving festivities.

Newly opened in Plymouth is The Box museum, telling the city’s illustrious maritime history inside a strikingly contemporary space.

Fourteen beautifully carved ship’s figureheads hang in the soaring glass atrium.

Here, an exhibition telling the story of the Mayflower and the Pilgrim Fathers in the 400th anniversary year of their voyage to the New World evokes the tight, gloomy interior endured by the religious refugees looking for freedom.

This is matched by the more up-to-date thrills of gazing through the periscope of a nuclear submarine, reminding us of the key role played by the port in the history of the Royal Navy.

For a strong sense of our fabulous mechanical past, it’s hard to beat Ironbridge with its cluster of museums arguing the case for this Shropshire town being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.

The Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron reveals how a water-powered blast furnace changed the world by perfecting smelting with coke rather than coal.

You can step inside Abraham Darby’s original furnace and marvel at the neo-classical Eagle Slayer statue, produced for The Great Exhibition of 1851 to show cast iron could be used to make works of art as elegant as anything carved out of marble.

Britain’s proud military past is commemorated by a host of regimental museums.

One of the most stirring of these is the Gordon Highlanders Museum in Aberdeen.

Re-opening this month, it tells the 200-year-old story of one of Scotland’s finest regiments, where generation after generation served all around the world.

One of the most touching exhibits recounts the heroic storming of Dargai on the North-West Frontier in India.

Gurkhas, followed by Highlanders, were tasked with attacking the mountainous position in the face of withering fire.

“The sight was magnificent,” remembered one Gurkha, “I for one felt the tears springing up into my eyes and could not keep them back.”

As a sign of their mutual respect, Gordon Highlanders volunteered to carry down some of the wounded Gurkhas, a scene recreated in the museum.

But what really is the smallest museum in Britain?

The Mundesley Maritime Museum in Norfolk occupies the tiny ground floor of a coastguard’s watch tower.

And Raisbeck’s Dame School House in Cumbria transports visitors back to a time when pupils trudged across the remote landscape to this modest stone building.

But the winner by far is a bright red phone box outside the Maypole Inn on the outskirts of Halifax in West Yorkshire.

Stuffed with artefacts, Warley Museum tells the history of the local community.

Opened in 2016 to the accompaniment of a local brass band and Morris Dancers, the museum is open daily from 8am to 4pm – but be warned, there is only room for one visitor at a time.