Nottingham Industrial Museum

Nottingham Industrial Museum is situated in part of the 17th-century stables block of Wollaton Hall, located in a suburb of the city of Nottingham. The museum won the Nottinghamshire Heritage Site of the Year Award 2012, a local accolade issued by Experience Nottinghamshire, an organisation funded variously by Nottingham City Council, Nottinghamshire County Council and other sources.

The Museum collection closed in 2009 after Nottingham City Council withdrew funding, but has since reopened at weekends and bank holidays, helped by a £91,000GB government grant. Now a volunteer-run organisation, the museum aims to be self-financing and charges for entry with higher fees at steaming events.

The museum contains a display of textiles machinery, transport, telecommunications, mining and engineering technology from Nottingham's past, featuring a fully operational analogue telephone network; a display of cycles, motorcycles and motor cars linked to the city; and examples of significant lace-making machinery – which put Nottingham on the textile map.

It also houses an operational Basford Beam Engine with occasional steamings held on some Sundays, usually the last Sunday of the month.

The museum has displays relating to five areas of Nottingham industry: Textiles, Transport, Communications, Mining and Steam, each portraying Nottingham’s rich industrial heritage.

Learn about the lives of the men, women and children employed in the factories, the machines they used and what they produced; the very people and machines that helped make Nottingham the 'lace capital of the world'

Enjoy imagining or reminiscing about how we used to travel with restored Raleigh bicycles and Brough motorbikes (including George Brough's own trails motorcycle, made in sheffield)

See the 17th-century Baskerville coach, the Brough superior car, the mysterious Celer car and Thomas Humbers own bicycle.

Learn about how Nottingham changed the communications industry, and how the communications industry changed the daily lives of Nottingham people.

See and hear the restored vintage radios and gramophones dating back to the 1920s, and tap your own morse code message on a telegraph systems

Outside is displayed a large wooden Gin Wheel. This horse gin was removed from a local colliery and had been used for bringing coal to the surface in mines with short pit shafts. It is reputed to be one of only a handful remaining today.

Nearby is a coal truck from Clifton Colliery from the days when this mine was providing most of the coal for the nearby Wilford Power Station which was situated on the site of what is now the Riverside Retail Park.

...
Wikipedia