Collection: Museum of Policing in Cheshire

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  The collections of the Museum of Policing in Cheshire (MOPIC) are based on a collection of objects formerly housed at the Force Training centre (FTC) at Crewe and objects from Warrington Police Station.

  The collection at Crewe had been partly catalogued on card index and then abandoned in the 1970s. In 1984 the museum was relaunched and cataloguing began again in book form, numerous objects were sent to the County Records office at Chester on loan and are still there. In early 1990 the collection was abandoned again and stored in a store room at Crewe FTC.

  When the training centre was due to close in 2004 the collection was to be disposed of but interim storage was found at Warrington from where a new digital cataloguing system was started in a dedicated database aligning both of the old systems and attempting to find all of the artefacts, some of which had gone missing.

  All objects and photographs are now recorded on the collections database along with their current location.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2024

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  The current collections break down into three main areas:

  Objects

  These range in size from small individual items such as whistles and buttons, through uniforms to larger pieces such as a historic hand ambulance. Object categories of note include the following:

  • Medals – commemorative and otherwise
  • Costume – a wide range of Police uniforms and clothing
  • Silver and glass – mainly trophies for Police sporting and other events
  • Furniture – acquired from former police stations and courts
  • Clocks and watches – two cased clocks and one watch
  • Equipment – Relating to operational policing activities.
  • Crime exhibits – Relating to items used in the course of crime such as weapons, drugs and counterfeit notes.

  Documentary archives

  This comprises official records such as the Chief Constable’s Statistical Returns and personnel records of former officers, semi-official records such as newspaper cuttings, officer’s memoirs, printed and handwritten ephemera relating to police matters and crime files.

  Photographic archives

  This comprises monochrome and colour photographs, held in the form of plastic and glass negatives, positive paper prints and positive transparencies, both in plastic and older glass forms, as well as small amounts of videotape material. Some film reels were held, which have now been transferred to the North West film archives at Manchester and the North East film archives in Yorkshire.

  The museum will strive to maintain integrated collections of these components.

  Categories

  The MOPIC collections can be subdivided into the following categories:

  • Pre 1929 Policing – documents, objects and images
  • General  Police material (post 1829) – documents, objects and images relating to the Regular Police, Special Constabulary, Non Home Office Forces, Support (Civilian) Staff, Police Cadets, Volunteers, Temporary Staff and any law enforcement organisation concerned with Old Cheshire.
  • Crime – documents, objects and images relating to high profile criminal investigations, volume crime, criminals, courts, prisons and punishment.
  • Specialist Police Departments – documents, objects and images relating to specialist departments such as mounted police and dog sections, Firearms officers and underwater search unit as examples.
  • Transport – documents, objects and images relating to road, rail and air transport involving the police i.e. crash investigations, road safety campaigns etc.
  • War – documents, objects and images relating to police involvement in both World Wars, Cold War, auxiliary wartime police organisations, the police organised civil defence structure.
  • Welfare – documents, objects and images relating to the organisations set up for police welfare, such as the Police Federation and various Assurance groups.
  • Buildings – documents, objects and images relating to buildings used by police service.
  • Non-Police – i.e. documents, objects and images relating to objects not generated by the police but tangentially affecting the police e.g. Royal Visits and Home Office documents and more recently the Constabularies response and dealing with the Covid epidemic.

  The MOPIC collections cover the following period of time and geographical areas:

  • The Museum collects material relating to the history and development of the police service in the geographical area known as Old Cheshire and the Borough Forces which are now or have been part of Cheshire. The term “police service” encompasses not only the professional police forces created in the aftermath of the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 but also ancient forms of law enforcement stemming from the mediaeval period. The earliest material held in the collections dates from the mid eighteenth century.
  • The Museum also collects uniforms, insignia and secondary published material for other UK mainland police forces and for other police forces worldwide to serve as a comparison to the MOPIC collection.

  Addendum:

  Objects

  We now hold in excess of 250 items that relate to the operational policing of football matches by UK police. These items represent both visiting forces from across the globe to countries UK police have visited, together with background information where available.

  Equipment

  This now includes a fully liveried police car and motorcycle.

  Crime Exhibits

  We are in negotiation with Cheshire police to enable access to archived crime materials to support future exhibits. This has been enabled due to the adoption of the latest Modes museum management software and its adoption onto the servers for Cheshire police providing world class encryption and security.

  Photographic archives

  This now includes digital images that are transferred to us from the force press office and officers attending high profile events, we also hold a large number of 35mm negatives.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2024

  Licence: CC BY-NC