Collection: Leicestershire County Council Museum Services

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  The Leicestershire County Council Museum collections were formed from the core collections of the Leicester Town (and later City) Museum and the Melton Mowbray Museum.

  Leicester Museum developed from the middle of C19^th with the support of the Town and later (from 1922) City Council and the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society. In the 1930s a Schools Loans collection was created as a significant part of Service delivery. In the 1940s some rationalisation of collections transferred material from the main collections to School Loans and also out of the service to other UK museums which had sustained losses due to war time bombing.

  In 1974 the re-organisation of local government in Leicestershire created the Leicestershire County Council Museums, Arts & Records Service (LMARS) with responsibility for museums in Leicester, Leicestershire and the historic county of Rutland.

  Between 1974 and 1997 LMARS developed collections based on curatorial specialisms of Fine Art, Archaeology, Social History, Biology, Geology, Science & Technology and Decorative Arts (including Costume, Ethnography and historic buildings and interiors). Museums reflecting these collections were developed in Leicester and local community museums were developed in Melton Mowbray, Market Harborough, Oakham and Donington-le-Heath Manor House. The County Record Office was responsible for archive collections.

  Active collecting continued throughout this period and the collections grew in size and the curatorial departments increased in numbers of staff and focus of specialisation.

  From 1983 a separate collection group was formed to reflect the new partnership arrangements that created the new Harborough Museum in Market Harborough. (The new museum collection was formed around the founding collection of the Market Harborough Historical Society ownership of which is retained by the Society).

  In 1992 LMARS opened Snibston to showcase its coal mining and other Science and Technology collections.

  In 1997 subsequent reform of local government in Leicestershire gave unitary status to Leicester City and to Rutland and effectively formed three museum services, one for each authority area.

  In 1998 Charnwood Borough Council commissioned LMARS to co-create the Charnwood Museum in Loughborough using existing collections and curatorial knowledge. In 2007 the new Bosworth Battlefield Heritage centre was awarded Accredited Museum status with an associated collection of objects discovered through the process of landscape investigation to determine the actual site of the battle.

  From 1999 the collections sharing agreement between Leicester City, Rutland and Leicestershire County Councils and the subsequent Acquisition and Disposal Policies of the three authorities have defined the collecting priorities and lead areas for the services.

  In 1999 LMARS re-named its collecting areas on a thematic basis, re-forming the previous curatorial specialisms into commonly understood concepts of Natural Life, Home and Family Life, Working Life, Cultural Life and Sporting Life with Archaeology as a process driven collection that underpins all of the other themes.

  The Harborough Museum Collection continues to be developed under its own collections title.

  In 2014 Harborough Museum became part of a new culture hub on the first floor of the Symington Building as a result of a redevelopment project by Harborough District Council, Leicestershire County Council supported by the Market Harborough and The Bowdens Charity.

  In 2015 Leicestershire County Council took the decision to close Snibston Discovery.

  Museum, objects on display were returned to their ‘home location’ storage spaces, (including stores within the Eastern Annexe of County Hall) returned to lenders or loaned to other museums and heritage bodies./p>

  In 2016 Donington-le-Heath Manor House was transformed into The 1620s House and Garden, a curatorially-led project to re-interpret the house and its gardens in a more focussed way.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2021

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  Natural Life

  Collections primarily of specimens and information which reflect the landscape, flora and fauna of the county. They demonstrate the changing natural environment of Leicestershire and its place in the rest of the world over time, comprising two main groups of botany and zoology. They include supporting archives about individual collectors, groups, societies and institutions that help tell the history and development of the study of natural science. These collections are linked to environmental information, species and site records (much in digital formats). They include type and voucher specimens, microscopy, a comprehensive historic and contemporary book collection, some comparative specimens for reference, educational and display purposes.

  Botany Areas of Excellence:

  • British non-flowering plants (lichens)
  • British non-flowering plants (bryophytes)
  • Records and personalia of significant Leicestershire naturalists and collectors (including Pulteney, Bloxham, Berkeley, Sowter, Ballard, Fletcher)
  • Leicestershire flowering plants, ferns, slime moulds and algae.
  • Collections of local natural history societies
  • Botanical microscope slide collection

  Zoology Areas of excellence:

  • Important reference collections of Leicestershire (Leicester and Rutland) insects, from the 1800s to the present day and supporting reference collection of insects taken in the UK (England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales).

  Archaeology

  The archaeology collections provide evidence of human activity in what is now Leicestershire. They cover all periods of time from the prehistoric to the modern: some half a million years.

  The collections include both finds and documentary archives resulting from excavations, fieldwalking, metal detecting and chance finds across the county.

  The Finds Archive comprises a variety of archaeological materials, including human and animal remains.

  The Documentary Archive comprises information relating to the discovery, recovery and conservation of, and research into, the finds, together with archaeological fieldwork archives and published reports.

  The collections are supported by a library of selective reference works.

  Areas of excellence:

  • Lower Palaeolithic stone tools
  • The Hallaton Treasure
  • Coal mining before the Industrial Revolution
  • The Bosworth Collection. The collection contains material traditionally associated with the battle as well as over 5000 artefacts collected during the Bosworth Battlefield Survey. Other material includes objects from an important Roman temple site.

  Home and Family Life

  The Home and Family Life collections reflect domestic life now and in the past. Alongside changes in domestic and personal technology the collections also record important aspects of family life including rites of passage, family structures and entertainment.

  Objects including festivals and special occasions, games, toys, sporting equipment and the ephemera and objects related to things like shopping and holidays all fall within the collecting sphere of Home and Family Life.

  The home is also an outlet for creative expression and objects associated with interior decoration, furnishings and home crafts are an important aspect of the collections.

  Areas of excellence:

  • The Palitoy toy company collection
  • The Ladybird book collection
  • The home craft collection of objects exploring historic female creativity in the home

  Working Life

  This collection reflects local trades and industries, partly through collections of tools and equipment, and increasingly through the acquisition of finished products and ephemera and images.

  The collection has focussed on the work of traditional craftspeople such as the blacksmith, wheelwright, farmer and food producers and secondly on the commercial life of the County’s market towns in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

  The core of the collection is a representative selection of hand tools and products from the area’s traditional crafts, mainly dating from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. More recent collecting has concentrated on local businesses, mainly small and innovative concerns producing a unique local product.

  The collections also include the larger manufacturing industries of the C19th and C20th and reflect the growth and decline of the industrial era and focus on Engineering, Transport and Travel, Mining and other Extractive Industries.

  They represent the history of coal mining and the local mining communities. The story also draws on the Archaeology collections to tell the earliest story of coal mining with the nationally important collection of Tudor and later artefacts from the Lounge Opencast Sites.

  The focus of the coal mining collections is a comprehensive set of artefacts used by Leicestershire miners in the 20^th century, many of which are directly associated with the collieries of the North West Leicestershire Coalfield.

  Several Leicestershire-based businesses played an important role in transport technology; for example, Brush Electrical Engineering-built steam and diesel locomotives, tramcars, and bus bodies. Our collections include the only standardgauge Brush steam locomotive in existence.

  Our collections also reflect Leicestershire’s contribution to aircraft design and production. They include five Auster aircraft and objects related to Sir Frank Whittle’s work at Power Jets Ltd which perfected Britain’s first jet engine at Lutterworth and the World’s first jet engine factory at Whetstone.

  Leicestershire’s significant contribution to the development of tourism is reflected in objects which form part of the Thomas Cook Collection.

  Working Life, Areas of Excellence:

  • The Leicestershire Clock Collection made by local craftsmen in the period 1720 – 1820 including the Deacon Family clock making workshop from Barton in the Beans, with many original 18^th century tools and benches.
  • Historic horse drawn vehicles including the Beaumanor Coach of 1740
  • The Thomas Cook collection
  • N.C.B. Era coal mining artefacts
  • Leicestershire Aircraft design and manufacture
  • Brush Electrical Engineering

  Cultural Life

  The cultural life collections reflect the artistic and cultural interests and aspirations of the people and institutions of the county in terms of Visual Art and Fashion. The collections are currently formed in two main parts: the Art Collection and the Fashion Collection.

  The Art collection consists of works on paper and easel paintings which reflect the artist’s record of the changing landscape and built environment of the county; portraits of local people, their working and social lives and the traditional pursuits of local people particularly in the field of country sports.

  The Fashion collections reflect fashionable and occupational dress of adult men and women from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present day.

  Areas of excellence:

  • Symington collection of corsetry, foundation-wear and swimwear
  • NEXT archive and collection
  • International Fashion Design
  • The paintings and drawings of John Ferneley Snr and his family

  Reflecting Leicestershire Life at our Market Town Museums

  Leicestershire is a predominantly rural county with specialist centres of manufacturing, trade, learning, innovation and cultural and sporting activity. The overarching Leicestershire Life themes reflect the particular qualities of the story of Leicestershire including working on the land and earning a living from it as well as the villages, towns and industries that sprang from these activities.

  Each Museum site reflects the particular nature of the areas and communities which they serve and these are in turn reflected in the focus of collecting through these sites.

  Harborough Museum is a formal partnership with the Harborough District Council and the Market Harborough Historical Society, whose collection of local history items and antiquities is the foundation of the museum. Consideration is given to the collecting policies of other museums in this area including Lutterworth, Fleckney, Foxton, Hallaton, Desborough and Rothwell. Consideration is also given to the collecting policies of the Accredited museums in Northamptonshire.

  The Harborough Collections reflect the history and development of the town and surrounding villages and include local manufacturers, retailers, farmers and food producers.

  The collections also reflect local domestic and social life and record the contribution of local individuals.

  Life in and around Market Harborough are reflected in three ways:

  • through the (founding) collection of the Market Harborough Historical Society *
  • the LCC Harborough Collection (denoted by the LEIMH (pre 1997) or M.H. accession prefix)
  • objects from the area that are accessioned within the working life, natural life, home and family life, cultural life and archaeology collections

  *The Market Harborough Historical Society has ownership of its own collection and appoints an Honorary Curator to liaise with collections teams to ensure its care and management.

  The Harborough Museum collects material relating to the landscape and communities of Market Harborough and the parishes in its surrounding area

  Melton Carnegie Museum exhibits the changing nature of rural Leicestershire and the relationship of the countryside with the market town. It reflects recent and current agriculture, local food production (particularly Stilton cheese making and Pork Pie production) animal husbandry and countryside management generally.

  The changing lives of the area’s geographic and cultural communities from the earliest times to the present are also told within the galleries and enhanced through specific collecting and recording projects. The Museum leads on the collecting and recording of material associated with fox hunting and its related trades, crafts, and roles and its social and cultural life in partnership with the Museum of Hunting Trust.

  Charnwood Museum is a partnership with Charnwood Borough Council and reflects the communities, working life and natural life of the area. The objects relating to the area are drawn out of the established collecting themes but have particular strengths in Archaeology, Working Life, Home and Family Life and Natural Life.

  The Collections also reflect life in the town of Loughborough including its changing communities and their faiths, its principal industries and the University.

  Heritage Sites and Landscapes

  The 1620s House and Garden at Donington le Heath is a late Medieval manor house with Tudor and early Stuart additions. The contents of the building are a mixture of accessioned, un-accessioned historic and replica objects which tell the story of the lifestyle of the people who lived there during the early C17th.

  Bosworth Battlefield interprets the landscape and events of the decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses on 22^nd August 1485; the end to the Plantagenet dynasty and the beginning of the Tudor period.

  The Hunting Collection

  Because of Melton’s unique position both as a centre for fox-hunting and as a pivotal location in the evolution of fox-hunting as an organised sport, special consideration needs to be afforded to the scope and content of the hunting collections which are developed in association with the Museum of Hunting Trust. The Museum of Hunting Trust came into being in 1989 however, Leicester and Leicestershire Museums had been collecting material relating to local fox hunting almost from its founding in the 1840s. All the objects which relate to the history of fox hunting are accessioned items in the County Council’s collections.

  The hunting collections reflect the aspirations of the Museum of Hunting Trust by covering, at a representative level only, the broad scope of hunting and its opposition in the UK. This provides a national context against which the more detailed local collections can be set.

  These are specific to the ‘Leicestershire’ hunts (which straddle the county boundary) and represent all facets of the sport, its social milieu and its impact on the landscape of Leicestershire and its neighbouring counties.

  The objectives of the hunting collection are to gather a body of material evidence which demonstrates:

  • The role hunting has played in Leicestershire society and economic history, particularly in the Melton area; the families that spent the season there and the celebrities they entertained.
  • How the hunt is organised, the hunt year and its established pattern of activities, the Leicestershire hunts, their territories, traditions and trophies.
  • The hunting landscape, shaped to support fox populations and the chase, with traditional patterns of hedges, ditches and coverts, hunting lodges, country houses and estates.
  • The rural crafts and trades which are closely associated with hunting and equestrianism generally, for example saddlers, boot makers, farriers, grooms, victuallers, inn keepers, tailors, photographers and equestrian artists.
  • Hunting people themselves and how fox hunting impacted on their lives, hunting family histories, the hunt employees and hunt followers.
  • Anti-hunting groups and the people who support them, their beliefs and commitments, and the information they produce.
  • Hunting dress, from field clothes and liveries to hunt balls and hunt followers.

  It is important for this collection to be set in a wider, national context. To this end, collecting objects and information relating to different forms of hunting practised elsewhere in the UK is included in the remit.

  This is for illustrative purposes only, to provide a synoptic view of hunting nationally, not to acquire in great detail further study collections from beyond the ‘county’ hunt boundaries.

  The Museum of Hunting Trust will support collecting in these areas and will facilitate the acquisition of key items which will develop the national identity of the collections. These acquisitions will become part of the county council collections.

  The ‘Reserve’ Collection

  The ‘Reserve’ is a collection of original historic objects originally established for use as ‘handling’ and loan material during the 1930s and has been continuously added to since then. It originated from the ‘Leicestershire Museum Education Service’ whose remit was broader than that of the County. It is now used to support displays, exhibitions and loan requests.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2021

  Licence: CC BY-NC