Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery focuses its collection on history, geology and archaeology.^[1][2][3]

The museum is located at Terrace Road, Buxton, England. The museum opens every day but Mondays. Admission is free.

Permanent collections

The museum's permanent collections include:

• Carboniferous limestone fossil record of the Peak District collected between 1900 and 1950;
• Pliocene mammal evidence from caves and quarries throughout the Peak District;
• The archives of archaeologist Sir William Boyd Dawkins and geologist Dr John Wilfred (J.W.) Jackson, geologists associated with the county and with Manchester Museum;
• Randolph Douglas 'House of Wonders' collection from Castleton which includes a large collection of locks and keys and some unusual Houdini material;
• A Buxton photographic collection, a collection of local social history and ephemera, and a collection of Houdini materials;
• A fine art collection dominated by 19th and 20th century works in watercolours, oils and prints, including works by Sir Frank Brangwyn, Marc Chagall and Edgar Chahine.

Amongst the minerals are blue john, local specimens, and cave deposits. In 2006, the Buxton Museum purchased a rare collection of decorative Ashford Black Marble wares, together with tools used to work the stone collection left by John Michael Tomlinson.^[4] Other collections relating to Derbyshire, also managed from Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, include a Derbyshire Police Collection.

The Museum's exhibition galleries include the Boyd Dawkins Study and the ‘Wonders of the Peak’ gallery. Dawkins bequeathed to the Museum a complete Victorian study containing his furniture, scientific instruments, Oriental ware and fossil collection. The ‘Wonders of the Peak’ gallery explores Peak District history from the Big Bang to the Victorian era. Items include a bear in its Ice Age cave; a hyaena above a Devensian bone hole; a Neolithic burial chamber and remains of a Roman soldier.^[5]

See also

• List of museums in Derbyshire

References

External links

• Museum website
• Images from the collection