Collection: Royal Pump Room Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Cornucopia)

  Social History Collection

  Many domestic activities are represented including cooking, cleaning and pastimes. A collection of dolls, toys and games especially the Trollope Doll’s House. A large selection of greetings cards records Valentines, Birthdays, Christmas, Easter, births and deaths of times gone by. Postcards reveal images of the town, or greetings sent to Harrogate from further afield. A selection of photographs illustrates buildings, street scenes, people and other aspects of the District, some of which are still with us, and some of which have disappeared. A selection of bicycles celebrates the founding of the Cyclists Touring Club in Harrogate, and many of these are on show in the Royal Pump Room Museum. The tandem tricycle is always popular with visitors, as is the Penny Farthing, dating from 1874. Local shops and trades are represented, such as saddlery linen manufacture, and the chemists so prevalent in the spa. Harrogate’s Park Drag, a Victorian four-in-hand coach built by the local firm of Mackay and Fowler, would have been an elegant sight on the roads in the area. Harrogate’s history as a spa town is reflected in much of the material in the museum collection, and we continue to acquire spa related items wherever possible. A Peat Bath from the Royal Baths is on show in the Royal Pump Room Museum. Made of Burma teak, the peat bath would hold 50 gallons of mineral peat, impregnated with iron and salts. A combination needle shower is on display alongside the peat bath. A description from 1910 describes the treatment: There are eight baths here altogether, four entered from the ladies corridor and four approached from the gentlemen’s corridor. A great saving of space has been effected by installing one needle bath between two bathrooms. These needle baths are not only refreshing in themselves, but achieve their purpose without in the least degree calling upon the patient to exert herself or himself. A Vichy Massage Bath, also on display in the Royal Pump Room Museum, is a wooden table upon which the bather reclined and was massaged, while streams of water poured down from an overhead shower. Other treatment related items in the collection consist of treatment beds, a stretcher and some fixtures and fittings from the Royal Baths.

  Subjects

  Social History

  Costume and Textile Collection

  The earliest examples are embroideries worked by the Copts in Egypt, 16th century bedspread, 17th century stump work showing Charles II and Queen Henrietta. Embroidery also on two men’s waistcoats from the 18th century. Samplers include some 18th century and work by young Victorian schoolgirls. There are pieces of Victorian patchwork and a collection, 100 pieces, of lace samples including some of Ripon lace The costume collection is mainly women’s clothes ranging from 1800 to 1970 and from delicate muslin dresses of the 19th century to a pair of leather hot pants, but the strength is Victorian. There is a large collection of underwear and accessories – corsets, bloomers, underskirts, stockings, hats, shoes and gloves. Men’s costume is small bu comparison, but ranges from the linen shirt worn by Sir Henry Slingsby at his execution in 1658 to a pair of platform soled two-toned shoes from the 1970’s.

  Subjects

  Costume and Textile

  Decorative and Applied Art Collection

  About 1200 items including the Holland Child collection of northern England, mainly Leeds creamware and 19th century ceramics, a few Rockingham pieces, from dinner plates to coffee services, desk accessories and puzzle jugs or frog mugs. Commemorative pottery includes a mug celebrating the life of Blind Jack Metcalf of Knaresborough and satirising Napoleon Bonaparte. The Pemrose May collection is 95 drinking glasses from the 18th and 19th centuries. Most of the jewellery was the gift of Mrs Anne Hull Grundy in the 1980’s, and contains costume jewellery from the late 18th to the early 20th century including , hair accessories, Victorian mourning jewellery, tiaras, silver hair brushes and pin boxes and some art nouveau brooches; about 50 metal pieces in total. Furniture 30 pieces from 17th to early 20th century; silver hair brushes and pin boxes from Hull Grundy Collection

  Subjects

  Decorative and Applied Arts

  Ancient Egyptian Collection

  The museum holds 700 ancient Egyptian objects. Classes of objects represented in the collection include: amulets; canopic jars; coffins (also cartonnage masks and mummy boards); flints; funerary cones; jewellery; metal figures; animal remains (mummies); papyrus; pottery; ‘Ptah-Sokar-Osiris’ figure; relief sculpture; scarabs; shabtis; stelae (stone); stone figures; stone vessels; textiles; tools/weapons; wooden figures; other. Objects are known to have come from the following locations in Egypt (with the name of the excavator/sponsor and year of excavation given where possible): Abydos (Garstang); Amarna (Petrie, 1891-1892); Oxyrhynchus (Petrie); Esna (Garstang and Jones – Liverpool University, 1905-1906).

  Subjects

  Antiquities; Ancient civilizations; Antiquity; Archaeological sites; Archaeological objects; Egyptology; Archaeological excavations

  Source: Cornucopia

  Date: Not known, but before 2015

  Licence: CC BY-NC