Museum Quartet

My mental acuity has been decidedly lacking over the last few days, but I am perhaps now able to dredge my complaining ganglia just enough to post about the museums I visited on my Yorkshire sojourn. A mixed bag, as always.


The drum-shaped structure of The Rotunda at Scarborough sits by the central gardens. I went in and discovered very quickly that its main focus is not local or social history but geology, and my heart sank a bit: rocks are not one of my major interests. In fact the Rotunda is great fun, focusing on the role of William Smith, the 18th/19th-century geologist, who first devised the theory of geological stratification. The dome which tops the museum is a spectacular space, its gallery of lovely old Victorian cabinets filled with the collection of the Scarborough Philosophical Society's leading members.








Filey Museum just along the coast is a complete contrast, a volunteer-run collection of the usual miscellaneous domestic and local paraphernalia with a certain nautical preponderance. It reminded me rather of Sheringham Museum down in Norfolk, which I saw last year. 

I confess myself a bit frustrated by Beck Isle Museum in Pickering, a somewhat bigger affair than Filey and four times the price to get in. The lovely 18th-century house it inhabits doubtless has a fascinating history but the Museum tells you nothing about it, only mentioning the family who lived there in passing. It has a range of reconstructed shops and businesses, but while the gents' outfitters pictured here is indeed based on an actual Pickering shop, most are generic representations - a pub, a barber's, and so on - and you are given strangely little insight into Pickering and its history.




The museum at Hornsea, however, takes its history seriously: several of the room displays are organised around the story of the family who lived there, reminding me rather of the Priest's House in Wimborne where I worked once upon a time. There is also an in-depth display about the Hornsea Pottery, a major local employer until its closure in 2000, and although in the great scheme of things this one business is not of huge significance, nevertheless this focus on the development, growth and decline of a single company is a brilliant and in my experience unique exposé of modern capitalism and how it works.