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Ludlow Museum

Ludlow Museum, Shropshire, England was founded in 1833 as the museum of Ludlow Natural History Society on October 12th 1833. The Museum began its existence located at Dinham House, Ludlow, England in a small room over some outbuildings. It is one of the oldest museums in the United Kingdom. The Museum moved to premises behind 56 Broad Street, Ludlow in 1835 and remained there until 1840 when it moved to the Assembly Rooms, Ludlow where it remained for over 100 years. In 1955 Ludlow Museum relocated again to the first floor of the Buttercross, Ludlow. After two further relocations the museum today is once again housed on the first floor of the Buttercross in the heart of Ludlow.

Ludlow Museum

Established	1833
Location	The Buttermarket, Ludlow
Website	https://ludlow.org.uk/ludlow-museum.html

History

Ludlow Museum was founded in 1833 as the museum of Ludlow Natural History Society on October 12th 1833. The Ludlow Natural History Society had 59 subscribing members at this time. The specimens that would form the basis of the museum belonged to William Jones and included, “A collection of land and marine shells. Between 2000 and 3000 minerals. An interesting suit of specimens illustrative of the geology of the immediate neighbourhood. A few stuffed birds.”

Among the founding members of the Ludlow Natural History Society and Museum were several individuals who were involved with geological research carried out by Roderick Murchison ; Reverend T. T. Lewis and Dr Thomas Lloyd. Lewis and Lloyd not only accompanied Murchison on his exploratory journeys around Shropshire they also contributed specimens to the Museum collection. Along with William Jones, Ludlow Museums first curator, they collaborated with Murchison in the classification of Silurian Rocks between 1831 and 1834. Reverend Lewis attempted to distinguish five rock formations in the district between Aymestrey and Ludlow. He then showed these divisions to Murchison in 1831 and Murchison used these as the basis for the classification that later became the Upper Silurian.

Thomas Lloyd discovered fossils in Old Red Sandstone in November 1832, it was previously thought that Old Red Sandstone did not contain any fossils. In January 1834 he discovered the Ludlow fossil bone bed in a small quarry near Ludford, Ludlow, England and shared this discovery with Murchison. Many of the geological specimens studied by Murchison and his collaborators were donated to Ludlow Museum.

Membership of Ludlow Natural History Society broadened over these early years to include people from the wider county area including several important landowners; Hon Robert Henry Clive, Edward Thomason and Thomas Andrew Knight of Downton. These members were involved in the running of the museum. Committee meetings were often chaired by either Hon Robert Henry Clive or Thomas Andrew Knight.

At a meeting 1836 it was decided that the site of the museum in Broad Street was, “inadequate to display the collections” and a new site at Ludlow Assembly Rooms was proposed. The Museum relocated to a purpose-built space in the upper floor of the Assembly Rooms and opened its doors to the public in September 1840, it remained there until 1955. Remaining features of the museum include an Egyptian style doorway.

The Museum in the Assembly rooms was described in The Ludlow Standard as, “most valuable…truly worthy of the attention of the scientific world” Ludlow Museum now had plenty of space to display the collections and collecting increased to include a wider range of objects. Curiosities from around the world were added to the geology and zoological collections. The Natural History Society and its members were greatly involved in the running of the museum at this time, with different members cataloguing and labelling objects at the assembly rooms. Members were also involved in active fieldwork and continued to contribute important specimens to the museum collections. For example Dr John Harley contributed two articles to the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society.

In 1888 Charles Fortey became curator and honorary secretary of Ludlow Museum. He oversaw the development of the museum for the next 19 years. After World War 1 there was a decline in activity by the Ludlow Natural History Society, many of the members were now elderly and memberships were lost. Visitor numbers to the museum also declined into the 1930s.,ref. Ludlow Natural History Society visitors book 1927-1960.</ref> The assembly rooms building needed expensive repairs and maintenance which the society could not afford.

In 1937 the Natural History Society committee passed the motion that, “the Society offer the whole of the contents of the Museum to Shropshire County Council”.

A survey carried out in 1938 by a representative of the Natural History Museum concluded that “Many of the objects now displayed are of interest to nobody while others, such as the fossils, are comprehensible only to experts.”

So, in September 1941 Shropshire County Council became the owner of all the exhibits and took on the running of the museum. Ludlow Natural History Society now had no function and a meeting was held to wind up the society. During World War II the museum was open by appointment only.

After World War II a proposal was made to move the museum from the old museum building which was too expensive to maintain. Relocation to the Buttercross, a building already owned by the council, was proposed. This space was much smaller than the previous museum building and therefore the displays were reconfigured to have an exclusively local focus. Collections no longer needed were disposed of, either through transfers to other museums or by auction. The new museum opened in June 1955 but did not have a dedicated curator until 1959 when John Norton was appointed as the museums first salaried curator. John had a passion for the natural history of the Ludlow area, and he worked hard to develop the displays and public access to the collections at the Buttercross.

“the museum is fortunate in having a devoted curator who has instilled such an air of enthusiasm in the place that it brings more pleasure to visitors than many museums which have more exhibits…nothing is ever too much trouble…”

Buttercross Interior.jpg

John encouraged active collecting of local artefacts and specimens. He arranged the displays to be clearly ordered and easily understood by visitors. All this collecting had consequences and by 1970 the museum was full and new premises were sought. In 1973, the museum extended to include offices and a store at Old Street, Ludlow, Shropshire where more space was available. At Old Street a countywide museum service was established to look after a range of different museum sites across the county. The first county curator, Geoffrey MacCabe, also helped to develop Acton Scott Historic Working Farm the first historic working farm of its type in Britain. The objects from Whitchurch Museum became part of the county collections as did Much Wenlock museum which had been initiated by volunteers but now joined the county museum service.

By the 1990s the need for a Museums Collections Centre was clear and research began to develop a state-of-the-art storage facility in Ludlow to house the museum collections. Building work finally began on this in 1998 and continued for 5 years until the centre opened in 2003.

All the collections which had been part of Ludlow Museum collections are now stored at Shropshire Museums Collections Centre along with other objects from around the county of Shropshire. Today, Ludlow Museum is in the Buttercross once more; now run by Ludlow Town Council with the collections on display loaned from Shropshire Museums and the nearby Shropshire Museums Collections Centre.

Hello, this Kate Muse's first go on Wikipedia. I live in England. I like it here. I love apples.

References

Henry Blunt

Blunt, Henry
Watercolour Portrait of Henry Blunt by James Canterbury Pardon
Born	14 November 1806 Southwark
Died	1853 Shrewsbury
Occupation(s)	Chemist and Druggist

Henry Blunt was born in Southwark. He later moved to Shrewsbury, Shropshire where he and his brother, Thomas, estalished a Chemist and Druggist shop and a soda water manufacturer at 23 Wyle Cop.

Henry Blunt became an accomplished scientist, a keen astronomer and talented watercolour artist.

In 1849 he constructed a model of the moon's surface showing the lunar crater Eratosthenes. The model was based on observations made by Blunt with his reflecting telescope from his home in Shrewsbury. An electrotype copy of a plaster replica set within a wooden case is held by the Science Museum and was donated to them by the Commissioners of the Great Exhibition. The model was displayed at the 1851 world exposition held in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London and described in the exhibition catalogue. A full description of the model's presentation to the British Association for the Advancement of Science is published in the Proceedings for their Meeting held in Birmigham during September 1849.

Watercolour of Pride Hill, Shrewsbury by Henry Blunt (1838)

The collections of Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery and the British Museum include pictures that he painted in Shrewsbury, Shropshire and Wales.

References

Henry Shaw was a notable nineteenth century taxidermist working in Shropshire, England. Shaw was born on the 3 October 1812 in Tarporley, Cheshire. His family moved to Shrewsbury, Shropshire when he was a young boy, where his father ran a small taxidermy shop in Shoplatch. Henry and his brother, John, trained under their father and continued to run the business as partners after their father's death. The brothers later separated and established taxidermy businesses in the town. Henry became the more successful, securing orders to mount and arrange collections at Hawkstone Park and Ludlow Museum. Lord Hill appointed him curator of his collection with an annual salary and a reputation that led to orders from across the country included commissions from the Duke of Westminster and the Duke of Portland.

Shaw was strong well-built character with a love of fighting and sport. He was an accomplished salmon fisherman. Shaw died, aged 75, on the 7 October 1887 after a short illness.

Great Auk taxidermy specimen prepared by Henry Shaw

Henry Shaw's specimens can be distinguished by his preference for all wood cases with a glass front. The specimens are usually mounted on an artificial blue-grey rock with surrounding foliage. Examples of his mounted specimens remain in the collections of Shropshire Museums. These include one of three Great Auk specimens prepared by him.

Henry Shaw

George Maw

George Maw was one of those remarkable people of the 19th century. He was a true Victorian polymath with his many occupations including manufacturing tiles and art pottery, chemistry, geology, botany, archaeology, watercolour painting and gardening. He was born in London on 10th December 1832 and died at Kenley in Surrey on 7th February 1912. However, for most of his life, he lived and worked in Shropshire.

George Maw and his younger brother Arthur purchased a run-down tile-making business from the Worcester Porcelain Company in 1850. Their business was transferred to Benthall near Ironbridge in 1852 and moved again to purpose-built works at nearby Jackfield in 1883.

Maw and Company were particularly well known for their encaustic and other tiles which were exported all over the world, providing decorative and easily-cleaned surfaces for walls and floors in public and domestic buildings. However, the company also produced Art Pottery, some of which involved the employment of well-known designers such as Walter Crane. The company won many awards at International Exhibitions including those in London 1862, Paris 1867, Philadelphia 1876 and Adelaide 1887.

George Maw wrote numerous geological papers. His archaeological activities included the recording of mosaics (some of which were subsequently destroyed by souvenir-hunters) at the excavations of Viroconium Cornoviorum at Wroxeter near Shrewsbury in the 1860s. These mosaics, no doubt, inspired his designs for Roman-style tiles. His watercolours of some of these mosaics are held in the collections of Shropshire Museums.

He was an experienced plant-hunter and accompanied Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker on a plant-hunting exhibition to Morocco and the Atlas Mountains in 1871. He became an expert on Crocus and published a monograph on the genus in 1886 - illustrated by his watercolours of which John Ruskin wrote that they were “most exquisite … and quite beyond criticism”. He was a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London. He created a famous garden at his home at Benthall Hall, Broseley.

Excavations at Wroxter

In 1788 Thomas Telford built road from Shrewsbury to Ironbridge reaviling and excavating Roman buildings at Wroxeter. In 1859 Thomas Wright began the first serious excavation of the roman remains at Wroxeter. In 1938 Shrewsbury's Roman Museum (Rowley's House) opened to the public. It was known as the Uriconium Museum

Mary Fletcher

Mary Fletcher was the wife of Rev John William Fletcher

Caughley Porcelain factory

The Caughley Porcelain Factory was located south of the River Severn near to Coalport, Shropshire.

In the 1750s Ambrose Gallimore, a north Staffordshire potter, leased a pottery at Caughley. He probably produced a rather utilitarian earthenware. In 1772 Thomas Turner came from Worcester to the Caughley works, which were adapted to cater for his knowledge of ‘soft-paste’ porcelain. This required the shipment of soapstone and china clays from Devon and Cornwall.

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