Bolton Museum facts for kids
Bolton Museum, Le Mans Crescent, Bolton.
|
|
| Established | 1852 |
|---|---|
| Location | Bolton Central Library and Museum, Le Mans Crescent, Bolton, BL1 1SE United Kingdom |
| Visitors | 275,000 (2018) |
| Public transit access | Bolton Interchange  |
Bolton Museum is a public museum, aquarium, and art gallery located in Bolton, England. It is owned by the Bolton Council. The museum is inside the historic Le Mans Crescent building, which is a grade II listed building. It shares its main entrance with the central library.
Museum History
The museum's story began in 1852 when Bolton decided to open its first public library. At first, there wasn't a museum collection. The very first items donated were fossils in 1853. Over time, the museum's collections grew to include scientific items and objects from different cultures around the world. People wanted a separate museum building, but the local council didn't want to spend money on it.
Dr. Chadwick's Gift
In 1876, a wealthy doctor named Samuel Taylor Chadwick left £5,000 in his will to create a museum in Bolton. This generous gift encouraged many others to donate items too. Dr. Chadwick wanted the money to be used for a "Museum of Natural History" in Queens Park, with free entry for everyone.
The Chadwick Museum opened in 1884. It had three floors of displays. It quickly gained important collections, including textile machines, fabric samples, and ancient Egyptian artifacts. The museum was well-organized: the basement had minerals and fossils, the ground floor showed stuffed animals and insects, and the first floor featured items from different cultures and ancient times.
The Chadwick Museum building was taken down in 1956. Its collections, including the Egyptian and industrial items, were moved to the Le Mans Crescent site.
Other Museum Locations
Over the years, Bolton had other museum locations. Mere Hall was given to the town in 1890 to be an art gallery. It displayed mostly 19th-century paintings. In 1938, its art collection was moved to the new gallery at Le Mans Crescent.
Hall i' th' Wood, a very old and important building, was given as a museum in 1899. It opened in 1902 and still tells the story of Samuel Crompton, who invented the spinning mule.
Other smaller museums, like Smithills Hall, also opened later. However, due to budget cuts, most of these smaller museums closed. Only Hall i' th' Wood and Smithills Hall remain open today. Many of the museum's 400,000 objects are now kept in a special storage and research center called the Chadwick Resource Centre, which opened in 2012.
Le Mans Crescent Museum
The current museum at Le Mans Crescent opened in 1934, showing natural history and art. The museum's aquarium opened in 1941. The museum was fully set up after World War II in 1947.
In 2006, a statue called the Amarna Princess that the museum had bought was found to be a fake. In 2018, the museum received £3.8 million to make its displays even better.
Collections
The museum has many different collections. These include natural history, ancient Egypt, archaeology, art, and local history. It also has one of Britain's oldest public aquariums. All these are housed with the Bolton Central Library in the Bolton Civic Centre. The museum also manages two other locations: Smithills Hall and Hall i' th' Wood.
Egyptology, Archaeology & World Cultures
Bolton Museum has one of the largest collections of archaeological objects in the UK, with over 10,000 items.
British Archaeology
This collection has about 4,000 items from British sites. These include objects from the Neolithic (New Stone Age), Bronze Age, and Roman times.
Ancient Near East
This collection includes finds from ancient sites in areas like Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Iran. It also has about 3,500 ancient textiles (fabrics) from Egypt and Sudan, some dating back 5,000 years!
Worldwide
The worldwide collection has over 1,500 items from excavations since the late 1800s. It includes artifacts from ancient Swiss lake villages, Aztec items from Mexico, and stone tools from places like North America, South America, and Africa. It also has ancient mummified human remains.
Egyptology
The Egyptian collection comes from Egypt and Sudan. It includes small everyday items, textiles, and parts of sculptures. The museum's cotton trade with Alexandria helped it get many Egyptian objects. The displays start with a beautiful gilded Egyptian mask, showing how these items might have looked when they first arrived in the UK.
Botany
The botany collection has about 60,000 dried plant specimens.
Vertebrate Zoology
This collection includes birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and fish. It has between 15,000 and 20,000 specimens.
Invertebrate Zoology
The invertebrate zoology collection contains about 200,000 specimens, which are animals without backbones like insects and spiders.
Geology
The geology collection has around 20,000 rock and mineral specimens.
Palaeontology - Fossils
This collection has about 15,000 fossils, mostly from Britain.
Mineralogy
The mineralogy collection has about 4,000 mineral specimens.
Petrology
There are 2,000 rock specimens in this collection.
Slides and Thin Sections
This collection has about 1,800 slides and thin sections of rocks and fossils, which are used for scientific study.
Models
The museum also has models of prehistoric animals, some made by the Natural History Museum in London.
Fine Art
Bolton Museum has a great art collection. In 1938, the Mere Hall art collection was moved here. Later, a gift from Frank Hindley Smith in 1940 added many British and European artworks.
The museum focuses on British oil paintings, portraits of local people, views of Bolton, and works by important artists connected to the town. It also collects English watercolors and British sculptures.
Today, the gallery has paintings by famous artists like J. M. W. Turner, Luca Giordano, and Laura Knight. It also has over 1,000 prints, mostly by British artists from the 20th century. A very important local painting is "Rivington Lakes" by Frederic William Hulme, painted in 1872.
Sculpture
The sculpture collection has 50 items, mostly British bronzes from the mid-20th century. It includes works by famous sculptors like Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Jacob Epstein.
Decorative Arts
The decorative arts collection includes 900 British ceramic items from medieval times to today. It also has 180 glass objects, and 85 metal reproductions from the Victoria & Albert Museum. There are also 20 decorative carved panels by Thomas Kershaw.
A special collection from Japan, given in 1959, includes 150 pieces like small decorative boxes and scent bottles from the 19th century.
Local History
This large section has 38,000 objects from the 17th to 20th centuries that tell the story of Bolton. It covers everything from family life, work, transport, health, and sports to industry and education in the town.
Special Exhibitions
Bolton Lives
The Bolton Lives gallery shares the story of Bolton and its people through different exhibits.
2019 'Desire, Love, Identity'
In March 2019, Bolton Museum hosted a festival called "OUTing the Past." It featured talks and presentations about different aspects of history and identity. In the summer of 2019, the museum also hosted the British Museum's touring exhibition "Desire Love Identity." This exhibition explored stories of identity and community in the UK, with a special focus on Bolton's own history. It included local photos and documents showing community events and important figures from Bolton's past.
See also
In Spanish: Museo de Bolton para niños
- Bolton Steam Museum
- List of museums in Greater Manchester
- Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 70
