Stockwood Discovery Centre facts for kids
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| Established | 1954 |
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| Location | Stockwood Park, Luton, England |
The Stockwood Discovery Centre is a fun and free museum located in Luton, England. It used to be called the Stockwood Craft Museum. This museum, along with the Wardown Park Museum, is managed by a charity called Luton Culture.
The centre has many interesting things to see. You can explore collections about local history, old objects found from the past (archaeology), rocks and minerals (geology), and traditional rural crafts. It's also home to the amazing Mossman Collection, which is the largest collection of horse-drawn carriages in all of Europe!
Outside the Discovery Centre, there are beautiful gardens to explore. The Period Gardens show how gardens looked in different times, like the Elizabethan Knot Garden or the "Dig for Victory" Garden from World War II. Newer gardens, like the Sensory Garden, World Garden, and Medicinal Garden, were added in 2007. You can also see unique art by Ian Hamilton Finlay here, as his sculptures are a special part of the landscape.
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History of the Centre
The museum first opened its doors in 1986 as Stockwood Park Museum. Later, it was completely updated and reopened in 2008 as the Stockwood Discovery Centre. This big project cost about £6 million!
The Mossman Carriage Collection
The Mossman Carriage Collection is a special part of the Stockwood Discovery Centre. It holds a huge collection of horse-drawn vehicles. This is the biggest collection of such vehicles in the whole United Kingdom! You can see original carriages from the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s. It's like stepping back in time to see how people used to travel.
The Bagshawe Gallery and Rural Crafts
The Stockwood Discovery Centre also has a collection of rural crafts and tools. These were gathered by a famous local historian named Thomas Wyatt Bagshawe. He was an expert on folk life, which means he studied how people lived and worked in the past.
Thomas Bagshawe was born in Dunstable in 1901. He started his own small private museum in Dunstable in 1927. A year later, in 1928, he became the honorary curator (manager) of Luton Museum. He later became the director of the museum.
Bagshawe and Charles Freeman, who took over as curator in 1936, visited many museums in Scandinavia. These museums were very good at showing folk life. They were inspired by what they saw and wanted to bring similar ideas to Luton Museum. In 1938, they opened a gallery at Wardown that showed rural industries. It was designed like the Scandinavian museums, with special displays and exhibits.
During the 1930s and after World War II, Bagshawe searched villages in Bedfordshire. He looked for people who still practiced old crafts. He interviewed them and collected their tools and creations.
Bagshawe also collected many notes, photos, and drawings. He organized everything carefully, which made his collection very detailed. He also gave the museum his large collection of books about farming, local trades, and crafts.
In 1954, Bagshawe offered his entire collection to Luton Museum. He gave the archaeology and work-related items as a gift. He also sold his collection of furniture and wooden items to the museum. He wanted to make sure there were good places to display the history of Bedfordshire's jobs and crafts. The rural life gallery stayed at Luton Museum until the 1970s. Now, this important collection is kept at the Stockwood Discovery Centre.
