Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings

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The Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings is an open-air industrial and architectural museum located in Stoke Heath, a district of Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England. Opened in 1967, the museum was conceived following the dismantling of a 15th century timber-framed house in Bromsgrove in 1967 to provide a location for its reconstruction.

The museum is centred on a collection of buildings which have of necessity had to be relocated from their original sites and restored. This includes a fully functioning windmill and a 1940s prefab house as used in many towns and cities after the Second World War to provide quick affordable replacements for houses destroyed by bombing. The Arcon V prefabricated house was originally constructed on Moat Lane in Yardley, Birmingham and was transported to the museum in 1981.^[1]

A Glasgow Police box, reminiscent of the BBC's Dr Who is part of the museum's kiosk collection.

The museum also contains the UK National Collection of telephone kiosks. This is the largest collection of telephone kiosks in the Country and is part of BT's Connected Earth heritage project. There are also three fully working analogue telephone exchanges (one of them a mobile TXE2^[2]), a manual switchboard and early automatic systems. The collection shows the complete history of telephone kiosks in the UK from 1912 to the 1990s together with demonstrations of how telephone calls were routed and connected before the advent of digital technology.

BT's last Strowger electromechanical exchange from the London region is preserved at Avoncroft in working condition in its original building.

The museum's Victorian church, originally built in 1891 at Bringsty Common, Herefordshire, was opened and re-dedicated in 1996 and services are held there regularly during the museum's open season. The church is also used for weddings, with receptions held in The New Guesten Hall, a new building at the museum which was built to incorporate the preserved timber roof of Guesten Hall, originally built next to Worcester Cathedral for entertaining the Prior's Guests. The New Guesten Hall is also used by outside parties for concerts, conferences, exhibitions and meetings.

[edit] References

^ Stratton, Michael (2000). Twentieth Century Industrial Archaeology. Taylor & Francis, 36. ISBN 0419246800.
^ Inside the telephone exchange electronic 2 (TXE2). Connected Earth. Retrieved on 2008-03-22.