Museum sights in Gloucestershire
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National Waterways Museum
The largest warehouse at the Gloucester Docks, Llanthony, is home to the National Waterways Museum, a hands-on kind of place where you can discover the history of Britain’s inland waterways. Among other boat-related topics, exhibitions cover the lives of ‘boat people’ – workers and their families who lived on narrowboats and moved goods up and down the intricate system of canals and rivers. Interactive hands-on displays include a model of a lock on a river, and you can scramble aboard a restored narrowboat moored outside to pretend that you, too, are a ‘boat person’.
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Holst Birthplace Museum
The composer Gustav Holst was born in Cheltenham in 1874, and his childhood home has been turned into a museum celebrating his life and work. The rooms are laid out in typical period fashion and feature many of Holst’s personal possessions, including the piano on which most of The Planets was composed, as well as photos of the notoriously camera-shy composer. The Victorian kitchen and other exhibits give you a good idea of what life was like ‘below stairs’.
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The Promenade
Famed as one of England's most beautiful streetscapes, The Promenade is a wide, tree-lined boulevard flanked by imposing period buildings. The Municipal Offices, built as private residences in 1825, are among the most striking on this street and face a statue of Edward Wilson (1872-1912), a local man who joined Captain Scott's ill-fated second expedition to the South Pole.
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Gloucester Folk Museum
This creaky-floored folk museum examines Gloucester domestic life, crafts and industries from 1500 to the present, its exhibits including the Civil War weaponry, a retro 1950s kitchen, and Black Dog – a beloved pub mascot. The museum is housed in a wonderful series of 16th- and 17th-century Tudor and Jacobean timber-framed buildings which used to belong to a merchant, an undertaker and a fishmonger.
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Hall of Fame Museum
You can visit the Hall of Fame museum, which charts the history of steeplechasing since 1819.
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Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum
Cheltenham’s excellent Art Gallery & Museum is well worth a visit for its depiction of Cheltenham life through the ages. It also has wonderful displays on William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, as well as Dutch and British art, rare Chinese and English ceramics and a section on Edward Wilson’s expedition to Antarctica. The museum was closed for redevelopment at the time of writing and is due to reopen in spring 2013; the new extension will make a splendid home for the art gallery.
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Tewkesbury Museum
Displays finds from Roman and medieval times as well as a diorama on the Battle of Tewkesbury.
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John Moore Countryside Museum
This small museum, set in a wonderfully atmospheric 15th-century dwelling, gives an insight into life in Tudor times and features a fully restored late-medieval home and shop.
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Gloucester City Museum & Art Gallery
The bright, spacious city museum is a jolly romp through everything from dinosaur fossils, interactive natural-history section and Roman artefacts to paintings by the artists Turner and Gainsborough.
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Dean Heritage Centre
For an insight into the history of the forest (and its people) since the Ice Age, this entertaining museum looks at everything from the forest’s geology to Roman occupation, medieval hunting laws, free mining, cottage crafts and coal mining. There are plenty for kids, too, from ‘what’s that smell?’ boxes and other tactile exhibits, to a mini-zoo with pigs, rabbits and weasels, an adventure playground and the current pride and joy – the Gruffalo Trail, featuring life-size wooden carvings from the Julia Donaldson classic.
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Art Gallery & Museum
Cheltenham's excellent Art Gallery & Museum is well worth a visit for its depiction of Cheltenham life through the ages. It also has wonderful displays on William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, as well as Dutch and British art, rare Chinese and English ceramics and a section on Edward Wilson's expedition to Antarctica. The museum was closed for redevelopment in 2011. Check the website for details on reopening.
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