Stockwood Discovery Centre

Stockwood Discovery Centre

Established	1954
Location	Stockwood Park, Luton, England
Website	[1]

Stockwood Discovery Centre is based in Stockwood Park, Luton, Bedfordshire.

Disscovery centre

A year of massive rebuilding and refurbishment saw the transformation of the former Stockwood Park Museum into a new visitor attraction and museum that opened its door to the public on 12th July 2008. Run by Museums Luton on behalf of the Luton Cultural Services Trust, Stockwood Discovery Centre has been made possible thanks to a £3.7 million cash injection from the Heritage Lottery Fund along with £1.2 million Objective 2 European Funding and very generous contributions from Luton Borough Council, the DCMS/Wolfson Foundation Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund, Waste Recycling Environmental Ltd (WREN), Garfield Weston Foundation, Renaissance and other trusts and groups. Members of the public have also been extremely supportive with donations and by helping to shape the displays and gardens through special projects, giving their time and expertise to support the plans.

The Centre is designed with environmentally green and sustainable principles in mind. It tells the stories of real people behind the collections, exploring the history of the region from prehistoric times to the evolution of Stockwood House and the Farley estate. The display collections include geology, archaeology, social history and rural crafts. Highlights include the Wenlok Jug - a rare medieval masterpiece with strong links to Luton’s history and development, the town’s last tram and the famous Mossman collection of carriages - the largest collection of its kind on display in the UK.

A paradise for garden enthusiasts, Stockwood Discovery Centre is one of the few places in the country where the work of acclaimed artist Ian Hamilton Finlay can be seen on permanent display. His Improvement Garden is a classical garden in which the sculptures are an integral part of the landscape. Once part of the original Stockwood House walled areas, the Period Gardens reflect the changing styles of gardening in this country. New areas include a contemplative Sensory Garden, a colourful World Garden and a Medicinal Garden highlighting the usefulness of plants.

The Centre also offers a range of complementary services and facilities including group bookings, corporate room and venue hire, birthday parties, weddings, schools sessions and adult learning courses

History

The collection of rural crafts and trades held at Stockwood Park Museum was amassed by Thomas Wyatt Bagshawe who was a notable local historian and a leading authority on folk life. Bagshawe was born in Dunstable in 1901 and became a director of the family engineering firm.

Bagshawe began a small private museum in Dunstable in 1925 and became the honorary curator of Luton Museum when it first opened in 1927. He later became the museums director.

Thomas Bagshawe and Charles Freeman, who succeeded Bagshawe as curator in 1936, visited many of the Scandinavian museums which were at the forefront of folk life museums in Europe.

Both were heasvily influenced by the Scandinavian example and they sought ways to introduce the ideas and methods they had witnessed into Luton Museum. In 1938 a rural industry gallery was opened at Wardown designed on Scandinavian principles with built in cases and freestanding exhibits.

The museum’s annual report of that year described Luton as being at the centre of a large area that was rapidly being transformed, and that the disappearance of many rural crafts was imminent.

During the 1930s and in the years immediately after the war Bagshawe undertook a systematic search of Bedfordshire villages to seek out the surviving craftsfolk. He interviewed them and acquired artifacts from them, generally these were the tools that they had been using, many of which are on display in the craft museum today, as well examples of their finished work. From 1946 to 1949 he added nearly 5,000 items to the collection, which were all carefully documented and recorded.

Bagshawe also amassed a very large amount of notes, photographs and illustrations and carefully classified them all using the Royal Anthropological Institutes British Ethnography Committees system. This gave the collection greater detail than was typical at the time. In addition he donated to the museum his large collection of books on agriculture, local trades, crafts and related topics.

In 1954 Bagshawe offered all his collection to Luton Museum. The archaeology and occupational collections were a gift conditional upon the purchase of his ethnographic collection (furniture, treen, ceramics etc) as well as the provision of suitable display facilities for the illustration of Bedfordshire occupations. The rural life gallery at Luton Museum remmained on display until the 1970s when the then curator decided to change the gallery to one showing aspects of Luton life and history of the town. The collection is now housed in Stockwood.

Unlike many collectors working in the same field, such as Raphael Salaman, Bagshawe confined his collecting to Bedfordshire and the borders of neighbouring counties which gives the collection a very strong regional identity. Since its inception the museum service has had a very firm collecting policy to ensure that the collections have a real local significance, rather being a random compilation of curios.

Bagshawe’s belief that many of the crafts and trades were on the verge of extinction proved correct and in a world of increasing standardisation, his collection is now one of the finest regionally based rural life collections in the country.

The park is also home to the Mossman Collection. A collection of horse drawn carriages.