  Location within Somerset and the United Kingdom | |
Former name | The Shoe Museum |
|---|---|
| Established | 2025 |
| Location | Street, Somerset, England |
| Coordinates | 51°07′44″N2°44′22″W / 51.1290°N 2.7394°W |
| Type | Design and History Museum |
| Collections | Shoes, history of shoemaking, community and design memorabilia, ancient fossils. |
| Visitors | N/A |
| Director | Rosie Martin |
| Curator | Nicky Dowding |
| Website | www.shoemakersmuseum.org.uk |
Shoemakers Museum opened as a brand new visitor attraction at The Grange in Street in September 2025 replacing the old The Shoe Museum in Street, Somerset, England. [1]
Contents
The museum tells the story of 200 years of shoemaking with permanent galleries dedicated to the social history of shoemaking in Street, the original home of the C&J Clarks shoe brand. [2]
Four galleries house permanent exhibitions telling the history of footwear development and factory production, the Quaker origins of Street and the social and cultural impacts of the footwear business. A gallery on selling and buying shoes focusses on advertising and retail history with replica 1950s and 1980s shops. A fossil gallery displays a collection of marine reptiles found under the factories.
Shoemakers Museum is managed by the Alfred Gillett Trust, which was established in 2002 to care for the archives and collections of C&J Clark Ltd and the Clark family. The Trust bought the collections of a previous Shoe Museum when it closed in 2019, [2] as well as the Latin Verse Machine, a poetry generator built by C. & J. Clark's cousin John Clark in the 1830s. [3] [4]
The Alfred Gillett Trust’s collections Shoemakers Museum has an active education program supporting visits and outreach with schools and colleges through a dedicated education room and handling collection.
The Clarks started making slippers, shoes and boots in the town in the 1820s and the company grew, introducing mechanised processes in the 1860s. [5] Production continued until after 2000 when it was moved off-shore, using third party factories, predominantly located in Asia. In the 19th century, in line with the family’s Quaker values, the capital was also extended beyond the factory to benefit social initiatives in Street: a school was founded so that young men and women could combine working in the factory with continuing their education, a theatre was opened, a library was built, along with an open-air swimming pool, known as Greenbank, and town hall. [6] The company still has its headquarters in Street, behind a frontage which includes the clock tower and water tower, [7] In 1993 the redundant factory buildings were converted to form Clarks Village. [8]
The Shoe Museum closed to the public on 27 September 2019, and its artefacts were transferred to the ownership of the Alfred Gillett Trust. [9] In September 2023, planning permission was granted to the Alfred Gillett Trust to build a new Museum called Shoemakers Museum at The Grange, [10] a Grade II listed building, making the collections accessible to the public. The new brick building with a contemporary design created by Purcell Architects joins the Georgian Grange manor house, to a barn with medieval origins. [11] The new museum opened in September 2025, alongside the Shoemaker's Cafe which brings the manor house into use alongside the new museum buildings. [12]