Clifton Park Museum, Rotherham
For most people, a trip to Rotherham used to mean a trip to Magna, the former steelworks that opened as a spectacular science centre thanks to lottery money in 2001. It probably didn't mean a trip to Rotherham's 'other' museum, and not only because it was closed until the beginning of this year.
Clifton Park Museum, the town's museum since 1893, had most of the problems familiar to anyone with a passing acquaintance with Britain's local museums. Its building - a once fine Palladian Grade II* listed house built in 1784 - was getting dowdy, and urgently needed repairs.
It sported an unattractive 1970s mock-Georgian extension and dated displays, with no lift. The staff, as usually happens in these scenarios,
battled on, but they must have felt overshadowed by their more flashy neighbour.
All that has changed after £3m - about £2m of it from the Heritage Lottery Fund - and a lot of hard work. The museum has been transformed into an attractive and educational local history museum with some charming and individual flourishes.
Remarkably for the relatively small sum involved, the building has been repaired, rewired and sympathetically redecorated, with steel supports put under the first floor. The 1970s extension has been completely remodelled, to create an attractive glazed-in 'courtyard' cafe and a smart shop.
There is now a lift, modern lavatories and fully kitted-out workshop for the in-house design/technical team. This still left just over £1m to spend on displays - thanks, apparently, to the thriftiness and expertise of the main building contractors, William Anelay Ltd, a firm with a history even longer than the museum's.
But having got the basic visitor services right - down to hiring a social company that trains people with learning difficulties to do the catering, and designing a local history research room - the biggest challenge for the Rotherham team was deciding how to interpret the building and the collections.
Clifton House sits in 56 acres of parkland, which used to belong to the wealthy Walker family, one-time owners of one of the largest ironworks in the country. One school of thought was to recreate a Georgian country house, with period furniture (which the museum did not possess).
The other school was to ignore the building as far as possible and treat the rooms purely as museum space. Fortunately, neither completely prevailed. The team has pulled off a sophisticated mix of the two, which enriches the experience of both house and museum.
Some of the interpretation is principally focused on the house and the story of the family: there are 'house detective' graphic panels dotted throughout, for example.
Some spaces are treated almost as private rooms: the dining room is used to display a Rockingham dinner service, made at nearby Swinton, on a large table surrounded by family portraits; the upstairs ladies' drawing room is used as a rest and reading area for visitors.
The most successful of the period rooms is the kitchen, which has been fitted with a working range, though this - like the dining room - would benefit from further interpretation for the periods when the range is not in use.
The room is used for cookery demonstrations of period food and has been the focus of a Friends-funded oral reminiscence project. The kitchen is a brilliant idea - though how well Mrs Beeton dishes such as Pigs Pettitoes would go down these days remains to be seen. The
museum wisely sticks to things like cakes and biscuits.
The remaining rooms are divided between themed rooms and more traditional chronological galleries. The most expensive of these, the Early Rotherham Gallery, is sited in the remodelled extension - a trot through Rotherham's history from the Carboniferous era to the Civil War.
These types of galleries seem to be popular with the public, but can be problematic. They are too often symptomatic of the increasingly Identikit version of the local history museum, the ones complete with the obligatory Romans, Victorian parlours, timelines and metres of graphic panels.
What lifts the Early Rotherham Gallery above the average is the quality of the objects that have been chosen to illustrate the various stories. In particular the Roman section - which also features an appealing interactive computer display - includes a line of original gravestones from nearby Templeborough, now the site of Magna.
Fascinating objects in themselves, they are accompanied by a little book that translates the Latin inscriptions and makes suggestions about the stories of the people who were buried there. This is rather gripping stuff, and makes these long ago people come almost immediately to life.
In the couple of sections for which the museum hasn't got really starry objects, it has had the good sense to borrow - including long-term loans from the British Museum and York Minster.
The rooms I enjoyed the most were those organised around themes, among them a collectors' room in the library complete with Marco, the stuffed dancing bear; a piece of stalactite; and a mummified raven in the 'Egyptomania' section. Upstairs, there is a room devoted to the Swinton/Rockingham pottery, complete with handling items and quizzes about the pieces on display.
The Clifton Park Museum team should feel proud of their efforts - and the 27,500 visitors who came on the first two months of opening seem to, and ought to, agree. If I were to make any criticism, it is that some of the rooms don't seem exploited to the full - something the team will no doubt work on over the next year or so.
They most certainly can do it when they have the time: the tiny children's room is one of the best I've seen in ages. It features toys and games, overseen by an enormous stuffed lion, painted savannah scenery, ethnographic objects and a tree with some very fine (real) bugs. Someone has even, lovingly, painted all the electric sockets with a zebra-stripe pattern.
Little by little, I suspect the rest will match this incredible attention to detail, making Clifton Park a truly fine, local history museum.
Jane Morris is a freelance writer
For most people, a trip to Rotherham used to mean a trip to Magna, the former steelworks that opened as a spectacular science centre thanks to lottery money in 2001. It probably didn't mean a trip to Rotherham's 'other' museum, and not only because it was closed until the beginning of this year.
Clifton Park Museum, the town's museum since 1893, had most of the problems familiar to anyone with a passing acquaintance with Britain's local museums. Its building - a once fine Palladian Grade II* listed house built in 1784 - was getting dowdy, and urgently needed repairs.
It sported an unattractive 1970s mock-Georgian extension and dated displays, with no lift. The staff, as usually happens in these scenarios,
battled on, but they must have felt overshadowed by their more flashy neighbour.
All that has changed after £3m - about £2m of it from the Heritage Lottery Fund - and a lot of hard work. The museum has been transformed into an attractive and educational local history museum with some charming and individual flourishes.
Remarkably for the relatively small sum involved, the building has been repaired, rewired and sympathetically redecorated, with steel supports put under the first floor. The 1970s extension has been completely remodelled, to create an attractive glazed-in 'courtyard' cafe and a smart shop.
There is now a lift, modern lavatories and fully kitted-out workshop for the in-house design/technical team. This still left just over £1m to spend on displays - thanks, apparently, to the thriftiness and expertise of the main building contractors, William Anelay Ltd, a firm with a history even longer than the museum's.
But having got the basic visitor services right - down to hiring a social company that trains people with learning difficulties to do the catering, and designing a local history research room - the biggest challenge for the Rotherham team was deciding how to interpret the building and the collections.
Clifton House sits in 56 acres of parkland, which used to belong to the wealthy Walker family, one-time owners of one of the largest ironworks in the country. One school of thought was to recreate a Georgian country house, with period furniture (which the museum did not possess).
The other school was to ignore the building as far as possible and treat the rooms purely as museum space. Fortunately, neither completely prevailed. The team has pulled off a sophisticated mix of the two, which enriches the experience of both house and museum.
Some of the interpretation is principally focused on the house and the story of the family: there are 'house detective' graphic panels dotted throughout, for example.
Some spaces are treated almost as private rooms: the dining room is used to display a Rockingham dinner service, made at nearby Swinton, on a large table surrounded by family portraits; the upstairs ladies' drawing room is used as a rest and reading area for visitors.
The most successful of the period rooms is the kitchen, which has been fitted with a working range, though this - like the dining room - would benefit from further interpretation for the periods when the range is not in use.
The room is used for cookery demonstrations of period food and has been the focus of a Friends-funded oral reminiscence project. The kitchen is a brilliant idea - though how well Mrs Beeton dishes such as Pigs Pettitoes would go down these days remains to be seen. The
museum wisely sticks to things like cakes and biscuits.
The remaining rooms are divided between themed rooms and more traditional chronological galleries. The most expensive of these, the Early Rotherham Gallery, is sited in the remodelled extension - a trot through Rotherham's history from the Carboniferous era to the Civil War.
These types of galleries seem to be popular with the public, but can be problematic. They are too often symptomatic of the increasingly Identikit version of the local history museum, the ones complete with the obligatory Romans, Victorian parlours, timelines and metres of graphic panels.
What lifts the Early Rotherham Gallery above the average is the quality of the objects that have been chosen to illustrate the various stories. In particular the Roman section - which also features an appealing interactive computer display - includes a line of original gravestones from nearby Templeborough, now the site of Magna.
Fascinating objects in themselves, they are accompanied by a little book that translates the Latin inscriptions and makes suggestions about the stories of the people who were buried there. This is rather gripping stuff, and makes these long ago people come almost immediately to life.
In the couple of sections for which the museum hasn't got really starry objects, it has had the good sense to borrow - including long-term loans from the British Museum and York Minster.
The rooms I enjoyed the most were those organised around themes, among them a collectors' room in the library complete with Marco, the stuffed dancing bear; a piece of stalactite; and a mummified raven in the 'Egyptomania' section. Upstairs, there is a room devoted to the Swinton/Rockingham pottery, complete with handling items and quizzes about the pieces on display.
The Clifton Park Museum team should feel proud of their efforts - and the 27,500 visitors who came on the first two months of opening seem to, and ought to, agree. If I were to make any criticism, it is that some of the rooms don't seem exploited to the full - something the team will no doubt work on over the next year or so.
They most certainly can do it when they have the time: the tiny children's room is one of the best I've seen in ages. It features toys and games, overseen by an enormous stuffed lion, painted savannah scenery, ethnographic objects and a tree with some very fine (real) bugs. Someone has even, lovingly, painted all the electric sockets with a zebra-stripe pattern.
Little by little, I suspect the rest will match this incredible attention to detail, making Clifton Park a truly fine, local history museum.
Jane Morris is a freelance writer
Project data
Funding: Heritage Lottery Fund, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, Foyle Foundation, Waste Recycling and Environment Ltd, Friends of the museum Architect: CPMG (Nottingham)
Principal building contractor: William Anelay Ltd
Exhibition design: The Works
Exhibition fit-out: Clements and Street Scenic works: Dave Astley and Ric Duffield Period lighting: Kansacraft
Low-tech interactives: Sirius
Signage: Modulex Project
Management: Rider Hunt
Funding: Heritage Lottery Fund, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, Foyle Foundation, Waste Recycling and Environment Ltd, Friends of the museum Architect: CPMG (Nottingham)
Principal building contractor: William Anelay Ltd
Exhibition design: The Works
Exhibition fit-out: Clements and Street Scenic works: Dave Astley and Ric Duffield Period lighting: Kansacraft
Low-tech interactives: Sirius
Signage: Modulex Project
Management: Rider Hunt
