Buxton Museum and Art Gallery
The museum is located at Terrace Road, Buxton, England. The museum opens every day except Mondays. Admission is free. The building was erected in 1880 and originally served as the Peak Hydropathic Hotel. During the First World War, the Red Cross used it to care for wounded Canadian soldiers. The Buxton Free Public Library & Museum moved into the building in 1928, leaving the Town Hall.
The museum's permanent collections include:
- Carboniferous limestone fossil record of the Peak District collected between 1900 and 1950;
- Pliocene mammal evidence from caves and quarries throughout the Peak District;
- The archives of archaeologist Sir William Boyd Dawkins and geologist Dr John Wilfrid (J.W.) Jackson, geologists associated with the county and with Manchester Museum;
- Randolph Douglas 'House of Wonders' collection from Castleton which includes a large collection of locks and keys and some unusual Houdini material;
- A Buxton photographic collection, a collection of local social history and ephemera, and a collection of Houdini materials;
- A fine art collection dominated by 19th and 20th century works in watercolours, oils and prints, including works by Sir Frank Brangwyn, Marc Chagall and Edgar Chahine.
Amongst the minerals are Blue John, carved limestone, local specimens, and cave deposits. In 2006, the Buxton Museum purchased a rare collection of decorative Ashford Black Marble wares, together with tools used to work the stone collection left by John Michael Tomlinson. Other collections relating to Derbyshire, also managed from Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, include a Derbyshire Police Collection.
The Museum's exhibition galleries include the Boyd Dawkins Study and the ‘Wonders of the Peak’ gallery. Dawkins bequeathed to the Museum a complete Victorian study containing his furniture, scientific instruments, books, Oriental ware and fossil collection. The ‘Wonders of the Peak’ gallery explores Peak District history from the Big Bang to the Victorian era. Items include a bear in its Ice Age cave; a hyaena above a Devensian bone hole; a Neolithic burial chamber and remains of a Roman soldier.
- Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Culture 24, UK.
- Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Derbyshire County Council, UK.
- Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Buxton Online.
- "Welcome to Buxton Museum & Art Gallery, 2012 pamphlet published by the museum.
- "Rare Ashford Black Marble Returns To Buxton Museum". Culture244. Retrieved 24 February 2011.
- Wonders of the Peak time tunnel, Derbyshire.gov.uk, accessed January 21, 2011