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Seeking Museums: 19th Century Life (Peak Districk, Lake District)

Seeking Museums: 19th Century Life (Peak Districk, Lake District)

Old Jul 5th, 2012, 06:51 AM
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Seeking Museums: 19th Century Life (Peak Districk, Lake District)

Hi, UK Fodorites.

I wonder if anyone local has reccos for museums that highlight 19th century England--in/near areas where I'll be this fall? I've found the Red House Stables/Carriage Museum in Matlock, which looks interesting. Anyone been?

I'll be in Matlock (Peak District) for a couple days and then based in Keswick (Lake District) for several days.

I would be interested in almost anything, but of special interest is agricultural practices, but also textiles, coal mines, schools, manufacturing, transportation. If anyone's heard of or been to any interesting historical sites/museums, I'd be most grateful for the info.

Thanks all!
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 07:00 AM
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Keswick has a Pencil Museum highlighting its graphic graphite industrial history of long ago. You can see what is purported to be the world's very first pencil.

http://www.pencilmuseum.co.uk/
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 07:02 AM
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The single, overwhelming, agricultural practice of the 19th century in your areas was getting off the land and going to Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester or the colonies to earn some proper money. So I wouldn't invest too much time looking for farming museums.

Anything mechanical, though: they breed round there like slugs in my garden. Wiki's your friend.

Derbyshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and South Yorkshire (you're very near Sheffield) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_in_England

The industrial list gets so huge it'd take forever to create a Greatest Hits list for you. For some reason, Wiki omits the Masson Mills Working Textile Museum (www.massonmills.co.uk) at Matlock Bath.
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 07:15 AM
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The other thing this year, though, is it's the two hundredth anniversary of the Luddites, who were especially strong in Nottinghamshire and what's now West Yorks, and must be the single most unfairly libelled group of dissidents in history.

Their predictions were 100% right (it took around two generations for the jobs created by mechanisation in the area to outnumber the jobs mechanisation destroyed), and the state refused to provide any kind of assistance to them in the meantime. Partly, of course, because of the cost America's damnfool invasion of Canada was imposing on us, but mostly because of the cost of suppressing America's chum Napoleon.

Lots of exhibitions and events not too far from where you're going to be. http://www.thelbt.org/Luddites-Kirklees http://www.luddites200.org.uk/ http://www.ludditelink.org.uk/events_news.php and more if you just google "luddites 2012"
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 07:53 AM
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Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks to you both. Masson Mills is a great find.

flanneruk... always find your native editorializing thought-provoking. Thanks for the posts.
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 07:56 AM
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"always find your native editorializing thought-provoking"

Is that a mistype for "naive"?
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 08:03 AM
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thanks for the laugh!
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 08:31 AM
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ChgoGal - here'xs a list of open air museums. I plan on going to Beamish soon.

http://www.britainsfinest.co.uk/muse...hclasscode/435

If you make it to York, try their cultural museum. I've been there a couple of times, and will probably go back.
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 08:32 AM
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oh wow. Great site. Thanks, rastaguytoday.
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 08:49 AM
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I visited Beamish last month. Its great - But quite a trek from the Lakes and/or Peaks. At least 3 hours from either depending on where you are staying.
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 09:31 AM
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Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage site (15 mills from Derby to Matlock)

http://www.derwentvalleymills.org/

Our trip to the National Coal Mining Museum (and Yorkshire Sculpture Garden) near Sheffield

http://ukfrey.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03...-national.html

MAGNA Science

http://ukfrey.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03...adventure.html

Slightly farther, Ironbridge

http://ukfrey.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/ironbridge.html

I think I posted my Lake District one on a previous post of yours

http://ukfrey.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05...t-weekend.html

Lots of Peak District walks if you poke around the blog as well

http://ukfrey.blogspot.co.uk
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 10:44 AM
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Thanks, indy_dad, for the re-post. I enjoyed your pics of your Lake District walk and will return to explore the Peak, too. Am a big fan of the hikes there in England... nothing quite like it in the midwest, right?
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 11:21 AM
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Oh, we have a few State Parks in Indiana that aren't too bad but it's quite different here. We are making the most of it.

One of my favorite walks was based out of Hartington if that interests you. It had a good mix of scenery.

http://ukfrey.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06...-district.html

This one is a little closer to your Matlock base:

http://ukfrey.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07...-district.html

Cromford is also very close and has a mill as well.

http://ukfrey.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06...k-incline.html

You'll definitely run out of time before things to do!

Enjoy your trip. I hope the weather is better than it has been lately (50-60's and rain -- in July!).
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 12:40 PM
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@ janisj & rastaguytoday: Beamish would've been cool... never enough time, is there?
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 12:43 PM
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There is the excellent

http://www.tulliehouse.co.uk/

In Carlisle, which is around 40 minutes from Keswick. MIL lives just outside Keswick and we visit The Tullie a couple of times a year. It covers all of the local human history time zones but due to its proximity to Hadrian's Wall has a large emphasis on Roman Britain. There is also a large insight into the huge trade Cumbria enjoyed with the rest of the world during the 18th and 19th century.

In transit between Matlock and Keswick you will be passing through the area which changed the world in perod between 1750 and 1850. It is worth trying to spend some time in the centre of Manchester, the areas around Castlefields have been preserved to show the Canal and rail networks together with many of the old mills with has since been converted into residential units. Manchester's museum of science and industry (mosi) has good working examles of the original steam engines.

Whilst in Keswick, you could take the short and beautiful trip down Borrowdale and up to Honister Pass where the slate mines were reopened some time ago. There are good exhibitions and the possibility to take a trip into the workings.
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 02:58 PM
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Hi
While staying in Cromford in the Peak District we spent an interesting half day at Crich Tramway museum. You can ride the trams and see the old shops and businesses etc. The view over the Derwent Valley is also spectacular.

Rosemary
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 06:56 PM
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Thanks Rosemary and belted_galloway. I read a while back about the slate mines and am glad to be reminded, and the tramways are something I'd not known of. Thanks again.
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Old Jul 5th, 2012, 09:18 PM
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They're not really tramways.

Crich is where Britain's trams went when they died. It's an open air museum, on the site of a worked-out quarry in open countryside - one of the very places in the region that never had passenger-carrying trams. Though, like almost everywhere else in Northern England, the quarry did have a role in the Industrial Revolution: George Stephenson once owned it and did build a small tramway there (too small for the modern museum's stock to use) for transporting the quarry's limestone.

It was really just a bit of otherwise unusable land when a postwar group of hobbyists decided to buy it for storing the samples they'd acquired of the trams that just about every city in the country was decommissioning in a process that lasted till the mid-sixties. It's mushroomed since, and some trams can now be ridden on.

But it's more or less Britain's (and almost the world's) first industrial heritage centre: almost as interesting for sparking off a global boom in such centres as the region is for sparking off industrialisation.
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Old Jul 6th, 2012, 02:26 AM
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The National Trust runs the excellent Quarry Bank Mill and Styal House which is just west of the Peak District in Cheshire: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/quarry-bank-mill/. They have done a terrific job in recreating the atmosphere of a complete working cotton mill powered by steam engines, and gives a good account of how the workers of the day would have lived.
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Old Jul 6th, 2012, 05:52 AM
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Thanks, flanner and Gordon. I'm spoilt for choice, it appears. The websites are wonderful, though, and it's been interesting to compare the appearance and functions of the tramways with America's trolleys and streetcars. If only I had months to explore.
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