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The Harborough Museum

Situated on the first floor of a former corset factory in (the perhaps aptly named) Adam and Eve Street, the Harborough Museum is one of the more hidden delights of Market Harborough. Once inside this large building which overshadows St. Dionysius' Church, the visitor enters a small but compact museum gallery. Here a wealth of artifacts and photographs jostle for attention. Within a few steps lie the reconstructed workroom of a local bootmaker, Liberty Bodices and medieval roof bosses from the parish church.

This branch of Leicestershire Museums, Arts and Records Service was opened in 1983, as a joint venture between the County and Harborough District Council. A third party was the Market Harborough Historical Society, which made available its considerable collection of artefacts and photographs. These had been acquired in a rather haphazard way since the 1930s, and until the mid 1970s had been on display above the former library on the Square. This collection had some items of great local importance, but it also included some delightfully quirky curios, such as an ancient Egyptian mummified cat's head and a fragment of a Transatlantic telegraph cable.

Today the museum's brief is more restrained: to preserve, record and explain all aspects of everyday life in Market Harborough and the fifty or so villages within a radius of about 7 miles of the town. This means that most of the villages served by The Kibworth Chronicle form the northern arc of the museum's "parish".

The museum is run by a full time curator, three part-time attendants and a team of unpaid volunteers currently numbering nine. In addition, we frequently call upon the vast array of skills and collections in the rest of the county-wide museum service.

The museum's greatest strengths lie in items associated with domestic and working life during the last 100 years. The reconstructed workroom of William Faulkner & Son illustrates this well. The Faulkner family had been making and repairing boots and shoes in Market Harborough since the 1830s, and from 1901 until it closed in 1987, three generations of craftsmen had worked in a small workroom behind the shop at 55 High Street. The business had come to our notice during research into retailing in the area and when the present Mr. Faulkner retired, the complete contents and fittings of the workroom were offered for collection. After almost 2 years of painstaking research, documentation, conservation and construction, the interior of the workroom was finally recreated in the museum. We were even allowed to take the floorboards, and these, together with some shoes and the serried rows of lasts which line the room, provide a nostalgic whiff of old wood and leather in this corner of the museum.

The project that helped to bring the Faulkner workroom to light was one of a number which we have carried out combining historical research, recorded spoken testimony and the collection of artefacts and photographs. Topics have so far included Welland Valley agriculture, domestic service and life in market Harborough's courtyard "slums" in the 1920s. Most have resulted in a major temporary exhibition and a publication. In fact our most recent book is talking shop, a fascinating look at how retailing in town and village has changed over the past century.

The photographic collection is one of the museum's most popular resources. This consists of over 6000 images which date from the 1850s to the present day. It is being constantly added to by donations of original photos and the archival quality copy prints made from loaned items by the Leicestershire Museums' Photographic Service. It is a collection full of contrasts. On one hand are the prints and paper negatives (calotypes) made by the Revd. William Law of Marston Trussell during the 1850s and 1860s. These include imaginative studies of estate workers, (full of fascinating detail of occupational costume) and many local scenes (alas, not of the area around Kibworth!). On the other hand is a miscellany of photographs produced by members of the public in response to an appeal in the Harborough Mail to record one day in the life of Market Harborough in September 1988. These photographs vary greatly in quality, but nevertheless constitute an intriguing record of work and leisure in the town at a moment in time.

The photographic collection have been frequently mined to create some of more popular publications. To date, the Harborough Museum has produced 4 books of historic photographs as well as providing the image and copy for the weekly "Memory Corner" column of the Harborough Mail for nearly 5 years. The amount of feedback we get from our readers is tremendous and almost every week some new photographic treasure is brought in to us to copy or keep.

The theme of mixing the old with the very new underlies all the collections and displays in the museum. We are especially interested in collecting and recording those things in today's life which are most likely not to survive to become the "antiques" of the future. To date these include all the domestic packaging used by a Kibworth family over a 3-week period, and every bit of junk mail delivered to a terraced house in Market Harborough since 1988.

The compact nature of the museum means that temporary exhibitions play a very important part of the displays. Three major shows are mounted each year, which give the public a chance to see many of the artefacts which normally have to be kept in store, as well as items loaned from other museums or private collections. Every year one exhibition deals with fine or decorative art in order to attract those not so interested in social history and to provide a contrast with the many functional artefacts usually on display. The museum also acts as an out-station for the county's art collection through our "Picture for a Season" section which shows 4 paintings on a related theme each year.

The Harborough Museum is constantly striving to be as widely used a community facility as possible. To this end, we do not rely solely on "passive" methods of communication such as displays and publications. The staff of the Leicestershire Museums Education Section work closely with schools in the area and we aim to provide as many children as possible with the delights of "hands-on" history through loans of items to schools and taught sessions using our collections. The museum is the venue for meetings of the Market Harborough Historical Society and the local branch of the Leicestershire Family History Society. Further help to societies is provided through loans of display boards, photographs and artefacts for their special exhibitions. Throughout the year free public lectures on a wide range of themes are held every 2 months, and every year the museum hosts a one-day seminar where individuals and groups researching the area's history can report on their latest findings.

In our attempt to take the museum to those who cannot get to us, we have become deeply involved in running and facilitating reminiscence groups. Here the museum artefacts prove to be powerful stimulants to the memories of the participants and the resulting discussions often bring to light many curios facts and opinions. Although originally aimed at elderly people, much of the recent work has been with inmates at HMP Gartree. The success of all this has shown how necessary it is for the Harborough Museum to seek out and work closely with as many sectors of the local community as possible. Only by such active involvement can we ensure that the museum can begin to collect, display and interpret a fair selection of the material culture of past daily life, both now and in the future.

© Steph Mastoris (Curator of the Museum)1995

Any comments or question please e-mail us @

stephen.poyzer@which.net or jemeny@globalnet.co.uk

 © Kibworth & District Chronicle 1998