Collection: Kirkleatham Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Cornucopia)

  Fine and Decorative Art

  There is a significant collection of posters (3,000), Staithes Group paintings, 20 works, early Len Tabner works, 50 items; and the Joe Cole collection; 50 items of furniture including chairs, cupboards and 2 important groups made in 1920s/30s at South Bank School and an unemployed miner’s workshop at Boosbeck.

  Social History

  About 350 items covering food preparation, laundering, cleaning heating and lighting; and a small collection of hand tools and unprovenanced tractors, potato diggers; small collection of shop fittings, ephemera, photographs and the contents of ‘Rockfeller’ sweet and rock makers; Male and female jewellery, toilet accessories, watches, spectacles, smoking items, 200 cameras accessories , viewers and lantern slides; toys and dolls and World War items numbering about 500.

  Industrial History

  Maritme collection important with ‘Zetland’ the world’s oldest existing lifeboat of 1802 on loan to RNLI at Zetland Museum now managed by RNLI, but not registered. Also includes fishing gear, lifeboat ephemera, models of cobles. At Kirkleatham is ‘ Seamew’ a sailing coble, ‘Sir James Knott’ Redcar’s last regular off shore lifeboat, ‘Volente’ a fishing boat and on loan a locally built motor boat. Local shipbuilding is represented by ship models, precision instruments, wooden patterns and an archive, objects and photographs from Smiths Dock Shipbuilding Co. There are traditional crafts tools for woodworking, leather working, printing, textile and pottery manufacture; A small collection of ironstone mining tools and equipment and a loan ‘Owen’ collection from the Eston Mines; 2 large railway bogied ladles and scale car and protective clothing and hand tools from the last Teesside blast furnace; Also small transport collection including a Middlesbrough trolley bus, cars and tractors.

  Costume and Textiles

  500 items of costume mainly female garments and accessories, fashion plates and household items including a Staithes bonnet.

  Natural Science

  There are about 100 natural history specimens including c.55 mounted birds and mammals, and corals, fish casts and teeth; small skeleton collection and local geology but limited fossils, rocks and minerals.

  Archaeology

  A small collection mainly prehistoric and medieval consisting of flints and a loan collection of finds from the medieval Guisborough Priory, material excavated form Marske Mill, small assemblage of prehistoric flint and pottery excavated from Mount Pleasant, Eston Hills and Eston Nab.

  Archives

  Major collection of maps of the North East from 16th century and 400 books of mid 18th century to present. Printed ephemera collection includes newspapers, cuttings, packaging, postcards, posters scrapbooks, greetings cards, trade cards and programmes; large collection (3,700) of photographs including albums, cartes des visites of local subjects and area by local photographers such as George Page.

  Source: Cornucopia

  Date: Not known, but before 2015

  Licence: CC BY-NC