You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Spent the day here. Some fantastic stuff and run by volunteers.
Soberingly 436 men from the air base that used to be there were lost in less than two years.
Ooh, I've been there, loved it. Since you're around, you could head up the coast if you want to see a real "little" museum.
[url= http://www.mundesleymaritimemuseum.co.uk/ ]http://www.mundesleymaritimemuseum.co.uk/[/url]
David Coulthard museum. Just dont expect a f1 car in dumfries...
Vasa Museum, Stockholm. Its not little in size but its all about "one wee ship".
https://brokenships.com/en in Zagreb
Broken hearts / love rifts. All the props and stories behind some great breakups.
Princetown jail up on Dartmoor, fascinated me as kid how intricate the workmanship on their makeshift tools were. If only they put as much effort into their lives before they got nicked.
If the weather is too foul for you to ride Innerleithen, pop into the National Trust's Robert Smail's print works. There's more to it than meets the eye.
The Peak District lead mining museum in Matlock was our best find... Great for tweens and adults alike
www.shoreham-aircraft-museum.co.uk
Great little battle of britain museum with loads of bits of british and german aircraft, nice little tea room too, great on a sunday morning ride sitting in the sun amongst bombs and propellers
local plug for the Nidderdale Museum in Pateley Bridge, rammed - no room for another thing.
Horniman. Does that count as a little museum?
U.S. Rangers Centre, Carrickfergus, NI. Small and quaint cottage but full of really good stuff.
I went to Brooklands many years ago, probably 1990-1. It was dead there so I was wandering around on my own in the aircraft hangar and the curator started talking to me about planes and next thing was inviting me to sit in the cockpits, use the controls etc, and giving me a guided tour.
I went into a huge hangar next, where they were restoring a crashed bomber (Wellington iirc?) I seem to remember that they were using some of the people who had built the planes in the first place, and I arrived just as a party of German tourists walked in, including a few Luftwaffe pilots. I've rarely had such a fascinating day out but of course the experience may be rather different these days. 🙂
[url= http://www.insectcircus.co.uk/museum.php ]Insect circus museum.[/url]
The wee one in Fort William . Great little place. The museum, that is.
[url= http://www.orkneywirelessmuseum.org.uk/ ]Orkney Wireless Museum[/url] for the star attraction - the first TV on Orkney built by two brothers called ****t. Being told how the ****ts built a telly was pretty good. The telly on display isn't the original one as built by the ****t brothers, but a replica, built by the daughter of one of the ****ts. Whose name wasn't Emma
Hawkinge aerodrome was a good one, used to be full sized when I was a kid, but now just a couple of tin huts.
Also, there is the Apothecary's Loft and Old Operating Theatre up that London, just round the corner from London Bridge station.
Southport Museum in the Botanical gardens is great. +1 for Keswick museum and its petrified cat
Yorkshire mining museum is really good
I'll chip in with two aviation museums
http://www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk
Dedicated to De Havilland, as you'd expect!. Not that big, but you can get inside most of the exhibits. Aircraft are a mix of military and commercial/private.
also
http://www.tangmere-museum.org.uk
Leans heavily towards the early sound barrier breaking attempts as this was the airfield that the flights took off from before going on their high speed runs along the coast
The aircraft here are in beautiful condition
Museum of packaging in London . Brilliant
Quex near Ramsgate, more of a nice house with lots of weird things collected aound the world by the family.
+1 for Horniman in South London too.
The Museum Of Victorian Inventions outside Whitby is amazing, it's in a bloke's extension and his collection of wonderful victorian science equipment that he will demonstrate for you with lots of lights, flashes and bangs! He can only take four or five people at a time and prides himself on being higher rated on trip advisor than Whitby Abbey!
Some good stuff to investigate here
The Denny Ship Tank in Dumbarton is pretty cool - it's not much like a museum, it's just like they closed up for the weekend and you're left to wander about and poke into things.
Or there's the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow Uni - great for mutants:
[url= https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2126/1875316620_f5ea34f701_z.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2126/1875316620_f5ea34f701_z.jp g"/> [/img]
There's also an anatomy museum with human versions, but you have to know who to ask to see that one...
Darfield Museum, Barnsley
Russian Kinetic Art at www.sharmanka.com in Glasgow.
Any small rural museum in New Zealand. Can also be mistaken for peoples houses or entire villages. Time travel you can touch.
Captain Cook museum in Staithes. Delightfully eccentric.
The museum of the diesel engine. Not the mobile diesel engine, no, that'd be boring- who's interested in cars? This is the real deal, 4 halls full of old pumps, mains electricity generators... Oh and a load of old phones, for reasons.
(I like that they have a merlin engine just stuck in a corner... "Yeah, that's out of a plane or something, I dunno why we have it. But check this out, it used to run the lights for a big house in aberystwth, how cool is [i]that[/i]?")
Also excellent exhibit explanations. "We had £500, and this was on ebay for £500". Doesn't mention the bottle of cheap wine that you know perfectly well was involved with that curating decision.
It all makes no sense whatsoever and generally gives the impression that some mad people collected so many engines that the only way to avoid being sectioned was to open a museum. But it's ace and I highly recommend it if you're in the area, the place just exudes passion and fumes.
National Cycle Museum in Llandrindod Wells.
[url= http://kulturland.rlp.de/einrichtungen/e/westwallmuseum-bad-bergzabern/ ]http://kulturland.rlp.de/einrichtungen/e/westwallmuseum-bad-bergzabern/[/url] in 2002.
Its basically one Siegfried Line gun emplacement in someone's back yard. A nice retired German guy was a volunteer who ran the place and spoke good English. He gave us directions to a nearby set of concrete dragon's teeth (antitank obstacle).
Then he asked if we were interested in the Maginot Line and went on to tell us about one of the forts that the French military had kept control of and still used parts of for communications. It is open for tours one day a year, and it was that day! 😯 So we went!!! 😀
The pencil museum in Keswick - always worth a visit, especially if someone's not been before !!
The Titanic museum in Inverness. Its a rather large home made boat in a small garden. Plus several other interesting old boats and a submarine. http://www.shipspace.co.uk/
[url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_Inn#Mr_Potter.E2.80.99s_Museum_of_Curiosities ]Mr Potter's Museum of Curiosities[/url] at the Jamainca Inn, Bodmin Moor. Sadly closed in 2003.
[url] http://www.warmuseumaskifou.com/E_index.html [/url]
There's a brilliant little natural history museum between Nafplio and Epidavros in the Peloponnese
[url] http://www.museumsnorfolk.org.uk/fenland-and-west-norfolk-aviation-museum [/url]
Tangmere and the De Havilland Museum as mentioned above.
Brooklands is still brilliant.
Not so little, but the pumping station at Kempton is excellent, as is the one at Crofton on the Kennet and Avon Canal.
National Speedway museum inside Paradise wildlife park , Broxbourne, Herts.
They have loads of beautiful speedway bikes plus a wonderful retro Workinton Comets tabbard/bib thingy. 🙂
Went to the [url= https://www.gwynedd.gov.uk/en/Residents/Leisure-parks-and-events/Museums-and-the-Arts/The-Lloyd-George-Museum.aspx ]Lloyd George museum[/url] not far from Cricieth in the summer.
Loads of interesting info and artefacts but apparently at risk of closure (said a man in a shop in Cricieth anyway) which would be a real pity if true. Support it if you're over that way on your travels I'd say!
Helmshore Textile Museums in Lancashire - a working pre-industrial wool fulling mill powered by a water wheel and a later yarn mill. You can see the process of transformation from raw cotton and cotton waste into yarn and every hour the staff run the mules and you can watch 3.5 kms of yarn being spun every time the machine makes a pass across the floor. The demo is given by local worthies who often have amazing Dibnah-type accents. The AV display is especially good, you learn a lot about the pre-industrial wool weavers and the patterns of life and work that created the incredible packhorse trails that we enjoy for cycling here in the Pennines.
Swiss Military Museum in Full....
http://www.militaer-museum.ch/xml_1/internet/de/intro.cfm
Probably not a small museum but stuffed full of stuff and a lot of it gets driven around at the weekend.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/musselburghbikers/albums/72157635791624065
Its twinned with a bunker tour....
Not sure about the best but the Abingdon collection certainly left an impression on me, some nice cars at a guys house and loads of good motor trade memorabilia........... and a Nazi display in a sealed room in his basement.
http://theabingdoncollection.com/
He seemed to have quite an affection for our blond haired, blue eyed mate too and kept telling him he could have been an officer.
Little bit of selfless marketing here but my old man and I own a cycle museum (Facebook The cycle museum walton hall and gardens).
Its a small, obviously, family run museum, completely free of charge set in the stable block of a country estate between Daresbury and Warrington.
We've got a great collection, even if i do say so myself, of bikes from all walks of life, corners of the world and right through the ages. If you speak nicely to my old fella he'll also let you ride some of the bikes too.
Any website for that cycle museum?
[url= http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/ ]The Pitt Rivers in Oxford[/url]
Probably a bit big for harry's tastes, and the man himself (like all the best Victorian Explorers) was a bit of a shit, but the museum's genius ensemble of the most bizarre collection of "stuff" you'll ever see under one roof will have you wandering around going "look at this!".
Not a museum, but if you leave the ferry at Ouistreham (Caen..) and head to Pegasus Bridge, there's a wee cafe right next to the bridge. Well worth a visit if you're passing, there's so much memorabilia packed inside floor to ceiling.
Coffee's good too.
One of my favourites was the toy museum in the old school house at Mullion Cove, sadly gone now. It was run by an enthusiastic Austrian guy who really brought the place to life. Amongst the vintage automata in one corner there was a large scale model of the insides of a mine complete with workings and machinery all running beautifully.
Really interesting guy who clearly loved his work, guess he just couldn't make it pay 🙁
Whilst waiting for a train home, actually because there's nothing else to do in Llandrindod.
Surprisingly, enjoyed it.
[url= http://www.cyclemuseum.org.uk/index.php?page=2 ]Here[/url]
If you're at Quex then you're just round the corner from Manston airport museum:
Great little place run by dusty old volunteers who will talk all day if you let them. Train set for the kids to play on, if you time it right they can climb in the planes and Sea King helichopter. My two drag the grandparents there every time we go to stay.
The Spitfire museum is just next door too.
If you happen to be around Lake Como then check out the cycling museum at Madonna del Ghisallo.
While it is strange to describe a museum whose buildings include aircraft hangers as "little", I suppose it's all relative. So I'd agree that Tangmere is great. It has interesting exhibits and a good tour. Also as a nice touch I like that the aircraft on external display ring the car park. By putting them next to cars it really serves to demonstrate how even small aircraft are still rather large objects.
An even smaller aircraft museum that I was impressed by is the [url= http://www.jetagemuseum.org/ ]Jet Age Museum[/url] in Gloucester. Visitors are allowed into their Vulcan, Hunter and Gnat cockpit sections and there are some knowledgeable guides to tell you about them too. Plus it's small shop is very cleverly stocked, with model kits of pretty much every aircraft they have in the museum available - a clever touch that much larger aviation museums seem to miss.
If we're doing small museums near Barnsley (Darfield?), how about Cawthorne village museum ? [url= http://www.cawthorne.org.uk/victoria-jubilee-museum.htm ]here[/url]
http://www.aworldinminiature.com/
just off M6 at Carlisle - has an excellent model shop next to it too!
In Cornwall
[url= http://www.museumofwitchcraft.com/ ]http://www.museumofwitchcraft.com/[/url]
Very interesting about what broomsticks were actually used for....
The lighthouse at Start Point near Dartmouth. Just me the wife and the chappy. Very charming gentleman who gave us a very gentle but effective sell for the lighthouse tour when stopped there on a walk.
One of the last fresnel lens lighthouses in the UK. Might even have been replaced by LED already. The light comes from one 1,000W bulb - visible to 27 miles (or whatever - to the horizon, basically)
Helmshore Textile Museums in Lancashire
I assume it's improved - was tedious in the extreme when I was (repeatedly) dragged there in my youth.
There's a cracking little motorcycle museum at Scaleby near Carlisle (it's signposted from the A689 and the A6071). It's in a bloke's garden, basically, in some large outbuildings. He specializes in Coventry Eagles, but he's got allsorts, including a few cars. He's a bit of an older Guy Martin type - ex-TT racer. Well worth a visit!
The Savings Bank Museum was surprisingly small and interesting!
http://www.savingsbanksmuseum.co.uk/
Littledean Jail in FoD. Boasting some pretty macabre stuff, but very much worth a visit if you like that sort of thing:
http://www.littledeanjail.com/
2 years ago we went to San Fran on holiday and took a bit of a road trip on the way to Yosemite.
We came across the Winchester Mystery house.
http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Amazing place, made even better by Stephen, our guide.
Well worth a visit if you're in that part of the world.
There's a little museum on an old airfield near the OP's one - probably 30 miles SW of it as I cycled past it on a day ride from Polstead.
+1 for Nickc and Pitt Rivers in Oxford. The sort of eclectic mix of exhibits and chaotic layout you'd picture a museum to be as a kid, made up of the sort of things a Victorian gent travelling the world [s]plundering local cultures[/s] collecting interesting artefacts would accrue, plus some locally sourced and slightly underwhelming fossils.
And each of the pillars on the upper hall is a different mineral 8)
The Rotunda museum Scarborough is good for half an hour.
Not necessarily the best, but The Bugatti Trust museum at Prescott Glos. is worth a visit.
A small but facinating and well presented museum
http://www.bugatti-trust.co.uk
Not always open so worth phoning ahead
+1 for The Pitt Rivers museum- Nickc's description is spot on-
Pickers - Member
Not a museum, but if you leave the ferry at Ouistreham (Caen..) and head to Pegasus Bridge, there's a wee cafe right next to the bridge. Well worth a visit if you're passing, there's so much memorabilia packed inside floor to ceiling.
Coffee's good too.
The museum at Pegasus Bridge is excellent and very moving, too. So is the Museum of Army Flying at Middle Wallop - they are 'twinned', as it were.
Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle. Just for the Swan thingy really.
Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds if you have a strong stomach and/or giving small children nightmares.
Always had a soft spot for Cliffe Castle in Keighley, too. Obviously no budget, but they always tried hard - some top taxidermy, exhibitions and indoor beehive too. And free, so good for kids. Might be shut now, I know it was for a while.
I stopped at a B&B in Darlington years ago and the whole place was a little military museum, it even had a maxim machine gun on tripod in the guests lounge. Wierd but brilliant [url= http://greenbankhotel.co.uk/index.html ]The Greenbank Hotel[/url]
A lot of fascinating items in this discussion. Since I can't conveniently visit the UK entries, here are a couple from my part of the world.
[url= http://www.mjt.org/ ]
The Museum of Jurassic Technology[/url] is not like any museum I have ever seen.
Closer to home, more of interest to bicyclists and run by my good friend Joe Breeze, is the [url= http://mmbhof.org/the-museum/about/ ]Marin Museum of Bicycling[/url].
My attic. 🙂
globalti - due to my old fella being an IT dinosaur and me not having enough time to sleep and eat at times, we haven't got a website I'm afraid.
The links others put up are for another cycling museum in mid wales, which I think has now closed.
As I say, we've got a facebook page, search for The Cycle Museum Walton Hall and Gardens.
+1 for the Dartmoor Prison Museum.
Fascinating place.
[url= http://www.squareandcompasspub.co.uk/index.php/fossil-museum.html ]The Fossil Museum at the Square and Compass[/url] in the Purbecks, near Charlie The Bikemonger.
No idea whats in the museum as I've never made it through the pub, but having a museum in a pub is a great idea!
I always wanted to go to the Yelverton Paperweight Musuem but sadly it is now closed.
I can't believe no one's mentioned [url= http://www.cartoonmuseum.org/ ]The London Cartoon Museum[/url] yet. Small but worth a visit for a healthy dose of childhood nostalgia.