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Martin Mere Wetland Centre

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In Brief. The Martin Mere Wetland Centre occupies a substantial rural site in Lancashire, to the East of Southport, run by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust . This site includes a relatively managed area that hosts the cafe, visitor centre and its own collection of birds (and otters) from around the globe. The bulk of the area, however, consists of habitats for wild birds, including the mere itself and a reedbed, which can be visited from a network of paths and observed in several hides. A Coscoroba swan on an impressive nest. What's Here? The area occupied by the wetland centre has had a complicated history, having once been a large lake that was drained for farmland, and which has more recently been converted into habitats for wildfowl. Thus, like various Royal Society for the Protection of Birds sites, such as St Aidans , the landscape looks like it could be natural, but in fact is carefully managed.  The Mere from Discovery Hide As many of the residents migrate, there are differ...
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Niche National Museums in Sheffield

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In Brief. Sheffield hosts two national museums, which are 10 minutes walk apart, just to the north and east of the City Centre. The National Emergency Services Museum is located in a police and fire station dating from 1900, and includes a wide range of displays and artefacts on the history of these and other emergency services. The National Videogame Museum contains a single large space occupied by arcade games, gaming consoles and computers, providing an opportunity to try out computer games from the last 50 years. Not all the characters at the Videogame museum are digital. What's Here? The National Emergency Services Museum has a low-key exterior, in the form of a historic redbrick building adjacent to the recently redeveloped Riverside district. However, the building is deceptively spacious, and the museum uses features of the building as to support its narrative. So, for example, the area on the police focuses on the history of policing, and uses the original cells to review...
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Car Factory Tours at Halewood

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In Brief. The Halewood car factory in Merseyside has been manufacturing Ford and, more recently, Jaguar Land Rover vehicles since the early 1960s.  Guided tours of the factory lead small groups through the manufacturing process from pressing of metal sheets into car body panels, through assembly and fitting-out, to final quality assessment and testing.  The factory is large and impressive, with cars made to order following a just-in-time manufacturing process, and the tour provides a detailed and informative run through. The JLR Experience Centre What's Here? Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) provides factory tours  at both its main manufacturing sites, at Solihull and Halewood. Halewood has been making JLR products since the Jaguar X-Type in the early 2000s, and at the time of my visit was making both Land Rover Discovery Sport and Range Rover Evoque models at the site. These share the same underlying platform and engines, and vehicle models can alternate through much of the prod...
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Science, Media and Industry Museums in Bradford

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In Brief. Bradford hosts the National Science and Media Museum in a large modern building in the city centre, which features engaging hands-on science exhibits and comprehensive spaces on aspects of the media, such as the history of photography, and media technologies and their uses. The Industrial Museum  occupies a former mill building, and is more conventional in basing exhibits on important collections of steam engines, textile machinery and motor vehicles. Science and Media Museum What's Here? The National Science and Media Museum is a large, engaging and modern museum.  The focus seems to be more on media than science, with a substantial and varied Sound and Vision exhibition across two floors covering a variety of media related topics from hardware to special effects.  These include items such as cameras and props, and a wide range of focused areas, for example on sound recording and the Cottingley Fairies . There is also a floor on the history of photography and ...
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Culture at The Harris in Preston and Wild Discoveries nearby

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In Brief. The Harris is an imposing neo-classical cultural hub in the centre of Preston, housing a museum, art gallery, library and cafe. Recently renovated, the interior blends light modern displays with decorative original features, and both the building and its contents make this an impressive destination. Outside the city, Wild Discovery complements The Harris by providing some natural history; in practice, it is a small zoo with a collection of healthy looking residents, in particular birds and mammals. The Central Hall of The Harris from the 3rd floor. What's Here? The Harris dates from 1893, and from the start had a broad remit provided by a trust established by a local lawyer (Edmund Harris) to fund a library, museum and art gallery.  All elements are still present, with a library on the ground floor, a museum on the first floor and an art gallery on the second floor.  However, the Central Hall itself hosts a variety of displays on art and history, so overall there a...
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Art and the Army in Bury

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In Brief. The Fusilier Museum  captures the history of the Lancashire Fusiliers Regiment, which turns out to have served in a huge variety of places and conflicts during its history.  The substantial museum primarily traces its history chronologically, with descriptions of deployments, personal stories and artefacts such as uniforms, letters and weapons.  Adjacent to the Fusilier Museum is the Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre , which features exhibits from the town's own collections as well as evolving exhibitions. The Fusilier Museum and memorial garden. What's Here? The current Royal Regiment of Fusiliers can trace its ancestry back through the Lancashire Fusiliers to Peyton's Regiment of Foot in 1688.  As a result, the regiment has had deployments in a diverse collection of settings, as varied as the Battle of Culloden in Scotland and the Battle of the Somme in the First World War. Thus there is a lot of history to report on, and the museum contains informat...
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National Railway Museum in York

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In Brief. The National Railway Museum in York is a long established destination on the history of railways in the UK, with a large collection of engines and carriages, as well as exhibitions, for example on signalling.  The collection includes famous locomotives such as The Flying Scotsman and Mallard (the world's fastest steam locomotive), as well as an impressive collection of Royal trains from over the years. Mallard, a record holder at 126mph in 1938 What's Here? The National Railway Museum has two main exhibition spaces, the Great Hall and the Station Hall. The former features a wide collection of locomotives from the history of train travel, from a reconstruction of Stephenson's Rocket  through a variety of other steam locomotives to the Intercity 125 and the Eurostar.  Although these could perhaps have been used to tell a story on the evolution of railways, in practice the space feels more like a collection of different exhibits than a history of the railways. ...
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