Whatever happened to industrial museums? Back in the 1970s, when the UK’s industrial decline was gathering pace, there were start-up projects all over the country to preserve the vanishing remains of our industrial heritage before they were demolished or destroyed.
Earlier preservation initiatives had often involved removing a single loom or beam engine from its working context to stand in dreary isolation on static display in a museum gallery.
Suddenly, complete mills, mines, potteries and pumping stations, together with their machines and equipment, were being saved by enthusiastic groups and turned into working museums.
Some of these projects grew and flourished, particularly where they were part of a site able to develop and present a range of popular heritage interests and activities to the visiting public.
But there could only ever be a few run on the scale of Ironbridge, Quarry Bank Mill or the Black Country Living Museum, which have all successfully diversified into wider social, regional and community history.
The smaller, more specialised and site-specific industrial museums have always struggled, often as independent trusts with a small band of dedicated volunteers and limited financial resources.
Even those set up and still run by larger local authorities, such as Armley Mills in Leeds and Bradford Industrial Museum, now feel unloved and out of the mainstream.
Lottery funding in the past 20 years has brought huge benefits to the sector as a whole, and especially to the arts, but so far industrial museums have received some fairly meagre crumbs from that rich cake.
Industrial museums are not fashionable, and although it is still pretty cool to repurpose a warehouse as a restaurant or to convert a power station into an art gallery, very little of our industrial heritage is thriving in a museum context today.
Industrial archaeology blossomed in the 1970s but then withered as an academic discipline within a couple of generations. Engineering and industrial history have a much lower profile in the wider museum sector today than at any time in the past 40 years. There is still a widespread view of this as a nerdy area that, with the exception of steam railways, has little appeal to families and the public.
One unfortunate result of this has been that science museums have tended to abandon the past to concentrate on the future, as the old technology of industry is felt to be irrelevant in our supposedly post-industrial 21st-century world.
The very word industry has almost disappeared from the heritage vocabulary, an opaque initial in some museum titles (Mosi – the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester) or replaced by something consultants consider more visitor-friendly (Thinktank in Birmingham, Catalyst in Widnes and Bristol’s M Shed).
It was starting to feel like a depressing and irreversible trend to marginalise our industrial heritage.
Which brings me, as I begin to sound like a grumpy old man, to enthuse about one museum of industry and technology that has had an effective makeover without selling its soul or morphing into a nebulous science centre.
Meet the London Museum of Water & Steam, formerly known as the Kew Bridge Steam Museum, which reopened in March after a £2.3m redevelopment that was partly financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The former waterworks pumping station is Grade I-listed and houses a magnificent collection of steam pumping engines and other working machinery, some original to the site and others collected by the museum trust from pumping stations across the country.
Sensitive refurbishment
The museum’s unique selling point has always been its ability to demonstrate the huge Cornish and rotative engines using steam generated on site.
But this is also the museum’s greatest problem, as full steam days have become almost prohibitively expensive to run. The cost of gas to operate its 1928 boiler has now risen to more than £25,000 a year.
The engines could be run on electricity, as beam engines often are in museums, but this would be a significant loss to the atmosphere and sense of historic process in action that visitors can experience here. Electric power and a bit of dry ice would just not be the same.
This dilemma must have weighed heavily on the museum trust in preparing and shaping its lottery bid. Resilience is the key word nowadays, but there are limits.
However much the project changed the displays, activities and facilities to encourage wider use and boost admissions these heavy basic operating costs would still be a worry. I have no idea of the figures and it would be too early to judge after only a few months, but the changes and plans at the museum all look positive.
There is a comforting “like your old museum but better” feel about it to anyone familiar with the museum as it was. The main halls, rooms and linking corridors retain the distinctive atmosphere of a working industrial building, austere and fit for purpose.
The building interior and the machines it houses are beautifully designed architectural set pieces, even though nobody but the water company staff would have seen them originally. Which is why, as a working museum open to all, it required sensitive refurbishment that would appeal to modern visitors but not look crass and brash.
Interpretation and display are often a weakness in industrial museums where wordy, technical and almost unintelligible labels rule. There are now clear, simple new labels and interpretative panels, with good use of historic photographs that convey the look and operation of the site and context in its heyday.
Large screens now show the machinery working, which is helpful when they are not in operation. There is scope for more creative use of new media to bring in other voices and explore the wider issues of water supply in London, but these can always be added later.
Sewer story
The important point is that visitors now feel more welcome in this cathedral of water and steam, and whether you fully grasp how each machine works or simply stay awed but mystified by their power doesn’t really matter.
It is no longer a niche experience for the specialist or enthusiast, there is something for everyone to enjoy. The new website makes the offer sound appealing and the museum does not disappoint when you get there.
A new introductory gallery called Waterworks tells the story of how London’s water has been cleaned up since the 17th century, from the New River project to the cholera outbreaks in the Victorian city.
The star is Sir Joseph Bazalgette and his innovative sewer system on which the modern metropolis still depends. There are tunnels and re-created sewers to walk through, well-designed displays and some entertaining and informative interactives.
Considering the environmental significance and controversy surrounding water management today, it would be good to see more engaging questions and displays about the present and future.
Thames Water and the other privatised utility companies are working on massive engineering projects today, including new tunnels under London, costly schemes that they are poor at explaining and selling to all of us as our water bills continue to rise.
It is not the museum’s place to act as a PR agency for the water companies, but I was surprised at how dull and ponderous a recent official video here about current water management on the Thames turned out to be.
But hats off to the museum for broadening and explaining what it can offer so creatively. It used to feel a bit of a lucky dip experience because you never quite knew what you would get.
The schedule of steam days appeared random and unreliable, making it a little uncertain whether any machines would be operating and if the narrow-gauge steam railway would be running or not.
It was also never clear whether the artists, blacksmith and craftspeople with workshops on the site were open for visitors to drop in or whether they were simply renting their own space.
Balance
The integration and promotion of all this is now deftly presented on the museum website, and the physical signage on site follows through when you get there.
My post-refurbishment visit was on a weekday, which meant it was not a steam day, but having checked the website in advance I did not feel misled over what was on offer and there was still plenty to see and do. It is all much better organised.
The refurbishment seems to strike the right balance between the preservation of an important working heritage site, which has always been the museum trust’s core purpose, and the expectations of the various audiences it now seeks and needs to reach.
Whether visitors come in a school party, as local residents from the different communities of Brentford, Chiswick and Kew or from much further afield in west London and beyond, meeting their requirements will be key to the museum’s progress and sustainability.
I wish the London Museum of Water & Steam every success and look forward to seeing a revival in the fortunes of the many other industrial museums around the country who are planning creatively for the future. You are not just relics of the past.
Oliver Green is a research fellow at the London Transport Museum
Earlier preservation initiatives had often involved removing a single loom or beam engine from its working context to stand in dreary isolation on static display in a museum gallery.
Suddenly, complete mills, mines, potteries and pumping stations, together with their machines and equipment, were being saved by enthusiastic groups and turned into working museums.
Some of these projects grew and flourished, particularly where they were part of a site able to develop and present a range of popular heritage interests and activities to the visiting public.
But there could only ever be a few run on the scale of Ironbridge, Quarry Bank Mill or the Black Country Living Museum, which have all successfully diversified into wider social, regional and community history.
The smaller, more specialised and site-specific industrial museums have always struggled, often as independent trusts with a small band of dedicated volunteers and limited financial resources.
Even those set up and still run by larger local authorities, such as Armley Mills in Leeds and Bradford Industrial Museum, now feel unloved and out of the mainstream.
Lottery funding in the past 20 years has brought huge benefits to the sector as a whole, and especially to the arts, but so far industrial museums have received some fairly meagre crumbs from that rich cake.
Industrial museums are not fashionable, and although it is still pretty cool to repurpose a warehouse as a restaurant or to convert a power station into an art gallery, very little of our industrial heritage is thriving in a museum context today.
Industrial archaeology blossomed in the 1970s but then withered as an academic discipline within a couple of generations. Engineering and industrial history have a much lower profile in the wider museum sector today than at any time in the past 40 years. There is still a widespread view of this as a nerdy area that, with the exception of steam railways, has little appeal to families and the public.
One unfortunate result of this has been that science museums have tended to abandon the past to concentrate on the future, as the old technology of industry is felt to be irrelevant in our supposedly post-industrial 21st-century world.
The very word industry has almost disappeared from the heritage vocabulary, an opaque initial in some museum titles (Mosi – the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester) or replaced by something consultants consider more visitor-friendly (Thinktank in Birmingham, Catalyst in Widnes and Bristol’s M Shed).
It was starting to feel like a depressing and irreversible trend to marginalise our industrial heritage.
Which brings me, as I begin to sound like a grumpy old man, to enthuse about one museum of industry and technology that has had an effective makeover without selling its soul or morphing into a nebulous science centre.
Meet the London Museum of Water & Steam, formerly known as the Kew Bridge Steam Museum, which reopened in March after a £2.3m redevelopment that was partly financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The former waterworks pumping station is Grade I-listed and houses a magnificent collection of steam pumping engines and other working machinery, some original to the site and others collected by the museum trust from pumping stations across the country.
Sensitive refurbishment
The museum’s unique selling point has always been its ability to demonstrate the huge Cornish and rotative engines using steam generated on site.
But this is also the museum’s greatest problem, as full steam days have become almost prohibitively expensive to run. The cost of gas to operate its 1928 boiler has now risen to more than £25,000 a year.
The engines could be run on electricity, as beam engines often are in museums, but this would be a significant loss to the atmosphere and sense of historic process in action that visitors can experience here. Electric power and a bit of dry ice would just not be the same.
This dilemma must have weighed heavily on the museum trust in preparing and shaping its lottery bid. Resilience is the key word nowadays, but there are limits.
However much the project changed the displays, activities and facilities to encourage wider use and boost admissions these heavy basic operating costs would still be a worry. I have no idea of the figures and it would be too early to judge after only a few months, but the changes and plans at the museum all look positive.
There is a comforting “like your old museum but better” feel about it to anyone familiar with the museum as it was. The main halls, rooms and linking corridors retain the distinctive atmosphere of a working industrial building, austere and fit for purpose.
The building interior and the machines it houses are beautifully designed architectural set pieces, even though nobody but the water company staff would have seen them originally. Which is why, as a working museum open to all, it required sensitive refurbishment that would appeal to modern visitors but not look crass and brash.
Interpretation and display are often a weakness in industrial museums where wordy, technical and almost unintelligible labels rule. There are now clear, simple new labels and interpretative panels, with good use of historic photographs that convey the look and operation of the site and context in its heyday.
Large screens now show the machinery working, which is helpful when they are not in operation. There is scope for more creative use of new media to bring in other voices and explore the wider issues of water supply in London, but these can always be added later.
Sewer story
The important point is that visitors now feel more welcome in this cathedral of water and steam, and whether you fully grasp how each machine works or simply stay awed but mystified by their power doesn’t really matter.
It is no longer a niche experience for the specialist or enthusiast, there is something for everyone to enjoy. The new website makes the offer sound appealing and the museum does not disappoint when you get there.
A new introductory gallery called Waterworks tells the story of how London’s water has been cleaned up since the 17th century, from the New River project to the cholera outbreaks in the Victorian city.
The star is Sir Joseph Bazalgette and his innovative sewer system on which the modern metropolis still depends. There are tunnels and re-created sewers to walk through, well-designed displays and some entertaining and informative interactives.
Considering the environmental significance and controversy surrounding water management today, it would be good to see more engaging questions and displays about the present and future.
Thames Water and the other privatised utility companies are working on massive engineering projects today, including new tunnels under London, costly schemes that they are poor at explaining and selling to all of us as our water bills continue to rise.
It is not the museum’s place to act as a PR agency for the water companies, but I was surprised at how dull and ponderous a recent official video here about current water management on the Thames turned out to be.
But hats off to the museum for broadening and explaining what it can offer so creatively. It used to feel a bit of a lucky dip experience because you never quite knew what you would get.
The schedule of steam days appeared random and unreliable, making it a little uncertain whether any machines would be operating and if the narrow-gauge steam railway would be running or not.
It was also never clear whether the artists, blacksmith and craftspeople with workshops on the site were open for visitors to drop in or whether they were simply renting their own space.
Balance
The integration and promotion of all this is now deftly presented on the museum website, and the physical signage on site follows through when you get there.
My post-refurbishment visit was on a weekday, which meant it was not a steam day, but having checked the website in advance I did not feel misled over what was on offer and there was still plenty to see and do. It is all much better organised.
The refurbishment seems to strike the right balance between the preservation of an important working heritage site, which has always been the museum trust’s core purpose, and the expectations of the various audiences it now seeks and needs to reach.
Whether visitors come in a school party, as local residents from the different communities of Brentford, Chiswick and Kew or from much further afield in west London and beyond, meeting their requirements will be key to the museum’s progress and sustainability.
I wish the London Museum of Water & Steam every success and look forward to seeing a revival in the fortunes of the many other industrial museums around the country who are planning creatively for the future. You are not just relics of the past.
Oliver Green is a research fellow at the London Transport Museum
Project data
- Cost £2.3m
- Main funder Heritage Lottery Fund £1.85m; Thames Water Utilities; London Borough of Hounslow; Weston Foundation; Charles Hayward Foundation
- Architect Dannatt, Johnson Architects
- Exhibition design Haley Sharpe Design
