Richmondshire Museum » Displays & Exibits
Below are just a few of the many interesting exibits on display at the museum.
Click the images to enlarge.
Fenwick's Grocers Shop
The founder of the Fenwick group of department stores, John James Fenwick, was born in Richmond in 1846 and began his working life in his father's grocer's shop in Frenchgate, where one of his tasks was making “farthing dips” - small tallow candles used by the poorer people to light them to bed. He became apprenticed to a draper, moved to Newcastle and in 1881 opened his own shop. He prospered and today Fenwick's is the largest independent group of department stores, with branches in Newcastle, York, London and the South. The museum has re-constructed the mid-Victorian grocer's shop, complete with John James making his candles.
The reconstructed grocers shop was officially
opened by his great-grandsons, John and
James Fenwick on May 20th 2008.
All Creatures Great and Small Surgery
The popular TV series “All Creatures Great and Small” was filmed in Swaledale and Wensleydale. The sets were mostly constructed in the old Green Howards gymnasium in Richmond. When the series ended in the 1980s, the sets were dismantled and the BBC offered the surgery set to the museum – at a price. Alf Wight – the real-life James Herriot - performed the opening.
Leadmining in Swaledale & Wensleydale
Leadmining in Swaledale and Wensleydale began in Roman times and the Normans continued the industry. Individual smallholders mined the ore galena on a small scale, then in the 1600s major landowners formed mining companies. The ore was obtained by hushing – washing away the subsoil to reveal the veins of ore – or by driving tunnels into the hillside to connect with vertical shafts. After smelting, the pigs of lead were carried by pack-ponies to Richmond.
The industry prospered until the end of the 19th century when there was a decline as cheaper sources of lead were found and the ore became too difficult to mine. Large numbers of miners and their families left the dales to seek their fortunes abroad.
Richmond Railway Station Model
The large-scale model of Richmond railway station in the early 1900s was made by local modelmaker Malcom Lee over a nine-year period while serving in the RAF in Scotland. He was then posted to Germany and needed to find a home for his model. The museum came to his rescue and offered to display it. So accurate is the model that the local council referred to it when needing to repair the station's roof.
Grinton Post Office
The post office at Grinton, near Reeth, in Swaledale, was run by successive generations of the Pedley family for almost 100 years in the front room of their cottage. When Miss Elsie Pedley died in 1993, the family gave the 19th century post office fittings to the museum.
Barker's Chemist
Barker's chemist's shop was started in the 1920s in Hildyard Road, Catterick Camp, then moved to new premises in Richmond Row in the camp in 1954. When the chemist, Leslie Barker, died in the 1970s, the family presented the fittings and equipment to the museum. As well as the shop there is a dispensary, with the original record books and medicines.
A LOAD OF OLD BULL !
Yes - and you will find it in the new display case in the All Creatures Great and Small Surgery. An enterprising farmer, careful with his £.s.d, made the nose-ring for his bull from a redundant sugar cutter. Before granulated sugar was produced in the mid-late 19th century, sugar was formed into large cone-shaped sugar loaves sometimes 2 feet long.
They were a common sight and families could buy a whole sugar loaf if they could afford it, or a smaller piece broken off the loaf which had to be powdered with a pestle and mortar or broken up with a hammer or mallet.
The Fenwick grocer’s shop would have sold sugar loaves.
Sugar loaves gave their name to hats and mountains.