 Keswick Museum and Art Gallery in 2011 | |
  Keswick Museum Location in the Lake District National Park, England | |
| Established | 1873 |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 54°36′11″N3°07′58″W / 54.6031°N 3.1329°W |
| Website | keswickmuseum |
Keswick Museum is a local museum based in Keswick in the English Lake District, which exhibits aspects of the landscape, history and culture of the area.
The collection was established as the Keswick Museum of Local and Natural History, a creation of the Keswick Literary and Scientific Society, in the Moot Hall, in 1873. [1] An important item in the original collection at the Moot Hall was a three-dimensional model of the Lake District, measuring 12 feet by 9 feet, made by Joseph and James Flintoft in 1837. [1]
The collection moved to purpose-built facilities, in Fitz Park, constructed as a memorial to the Hewetson brothers, distinguished Keswick benefactors, in 1897. [1] Cannon Hardwicke Rawnsley, one of founders of the National Trust, attended the opening of the art gallery at the museum, in 1906. [2]
The Fitz Park Trust got into financial difficulties and the collection was rescued by Allerdale Council in April 1994. [3] Then, in February 2007, Keswick Museum and Art Gallery Management Limited was formed to operate the museum on behalf of the council as the sole trustee. [4]
The building was extensively refurbished, with financial support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, [5] at a cost of £2.1 million between September 2012 and May 2014. [6] [7]
The museum has a collection of about 20,000 objects, of which 5-10% are on display. While these include material relating to the whole of north Cumbria, the museum now only collects items from the Derwent Seven Parishes, approximately the CA12 postcode area. [8]
The collection includes artifacts from Keswick's landscape, history and culture [9] as well as the three-dimensional model made by Joseph and James Flintoft. [1] It also includes The Musical Stones of Skiddaw, a number of lithophones built across two centuries around the town of Keswick using hornfels, a stone from the nearby Skiddaw mountain, which is said to have a superior tone and longer ring than the more commonly used slate. [10] Other items in the collection include a 700-year-old cat (found mummified within the wall of a church at Clifton near Penrith), a penny-farthing bicycle and a man-trap. [11]
The Hugh Walpole Collection includes manuscripts of all the Herries novels by Hugh Walpole (four novels set in the Lake District) and letters to Walpole from 13 leading English writers. [12]
The Mountain Heritage Trust maintains a changing exhibition in the museum: in 2018/19 "Man and Mountain" featured Chris Bonington, [13] and in 2019/20 it focused on Siegfried Herford. [14]
The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region and national park in North West England. It is primarily famous for its mountain, lake, and coastal scenery, and for its literary associations with William Wordsworth and other Lake Poets, Beatrix Potter, and John Ruskin.
Keswick is a market town and civil parish in the Cumberland unitary authority area of Cumbria, England. Historically, until 1974, it was part of the county of Cumberland. It lies within the Lake District National Park, Keswick is just north of Derwentwater and is four miles from Bassenthwaite Lake. The parish had a population of 5,243 at the 2011 census.
The Cumbria Way is a linear 112-kilometre (70-mile) long-distance footpath in Cumbria, England. The majority of the route is inside the boundaries of the Lake District National Park. Linking the two historic Cumbrian towns of Ulverston and Carlisle, it passes through the towns of Coniston and Keswick. The route cuts through Lakeland country via Coniston Water, Langdale, Borrowdale, Derwent Water, Skiddaw Forest and Caldbeck. It is a primarily low-level route with some high-level exposed sections.
Skiddaw is a mountain in the Lake District National Park in England. Its 931-metre (3,054 ft) summit is the sixth-highest in England. It lies just north of the town of Keswick, Cumbria, and dominates the skyline in this part of the northern lakes. It is the simplest of the Lake District mountains of this height to ascend and, as such, many walking guides recommend it to the occasional walker wishing to climb a mountain. This is the first summit of the fell running challenge known as the Bob Graham Round when undertaken in a clockwise direction.
Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley was an Anglican priest, poet, local politician and conservationist. He became nationally and internationally known as one of the three founders of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty in the 1890s.
Borrowdale is a valley and civil parish in the English Lake District in Cumberland, England. It is in the ceremonial county of Cumbria, and is sometimes referred to as Cumberland Borrowdale to distinguish it from another Borrowdale in the historic county of Westmorland.
The Keswick Convention is an annual gathering of conservative evangelical Christians in Keswick, in the English county of Cumbria.
The Wordsworth Trust is an independent charity in the United Kingdom. It celebrates the life of the poet William Wordsworth, and looks after Dove Cottage in the Lake District village of Grasmere where Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy Wordsworth lived between 1799 and 1808. It also looks after the majority of the surrounding properties in the conservation area of Town End, and a collection of manuscripts, books and fine art relating to Wordsworth and other writers and artists of the Romantic period. In 2020 it introduced the brand name Wordsworth Grasmere.
Bassenthwaite is a village and civil parish to the east of Bassenthwaite Lake in Cumbria, historically part of Cumberland, within the Lake District National Park, England. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 412, increasing to 481 at the 2011 Census. There is a Church of England Church, St John's Bassenthwaite and a tiny Methodist chapel. The village contains many elements of the archetypal English village including a green, primary school and a stream that runs through it.
Keswick School of Industrial Art (KSIA) was founded in 1884 by Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley and his wife Edith as an evening class in woodwork and repoussé metalwork at the Crosthwaite Parish Rooms, in Keswick, Cumbria. The enterprise, designed to alleviate unemployment, prospered, and within ten years more than a hundred men were attending classes. A new building was erected for the school at a nearby site.
The Armitt Museum, also known as the Armitt Museum and Library, is an independent museum and library, founded in Ambleside in Cumbria by Mary Louisa Armitt in 1909. It is a registered charity under English law.
Underskiddaw is a civil parish in the Borough of Allerdale in the English county of Cumbria. The parish lies immediately to the north of the town of Keswick, and includes the southern and eastern flanks of Skiddaw as well as part of the valley of the rivers Greta and Derwent, and a small part of Bassenthwaite Lake. The parish includes the settlements of Applethwaite, Millbeck and Ormathwaite, all of which lie along the line where the southern slopes of Skiddaw meet the valley.
Portinscale is a village in Cumbria, England, close to the western shore of Derwentwater in the Lake District National Park 1+1⁄2 miles from Keswick.
Crosthwaite Parish Church is a church at Great Crosthwaite on the outskirts of Keswick in Cumbria, England. It is dedicated to St Kentigern and is the Anglican church of the parish of Crosthwaite. Since 1951 it has been a Grade II* listed building. The church has an evangelical tradition.
The Musical Stones of Skiddaw are a number of lithophones built across two centuries around the town of Keswick, northern England, using hornfels, a stone from the nearby Skiddaw mountain, which is said to have a superior tone and longer ring than the more commonly used slate.[1]
The Moot Hall is a prominent historic building situated at the southern end of Main Street in Keswick, Cumbria, England. It is Grade II* listed.
Friars' Crag, sometimes spelled Friar's Crag or Friars Crag, is a promontory overlooking Derwentwater near Keswick, Cumbria, in the English Lake District. It is a popular site with visitors and was acquired for the public by the National Trust in the 1920s.
Richardson Henderson was a grandson of musician Joseph Richardson, who invented the Rock, Bell, and Steel Band from musical stones on the mountain of Skiddaw in Cumbria.
