Lake District 2/3: Keswick Museum and Art Gallery

Keswick Museum and Art Gallery describes itself as "A Victorian Cabinet of Curiosities" on its website and I must say I totally agree. It is the only purpose built museum in Cumbria and was free to visit making it a must while in Keswick on a rainy day, and in a way I enjoyed it more than the pencil museum, probably as I had no idea what it would be like and came away pleasantly surprised.

We were greeted by a lovely volunteer on entering the museum and he seemed happy to answer any questions, offering some interesting information about some of the items on display.

Like a lot of small museums, it is seeking funding, more information about this can be found here http://keswickmuseum.webs.com/keswickmuseumappeal.htm on it's website. We were more than happy to leave a donation in the donation box as the range and quality of objects on display was super and the museum as a whole was really charming.

Yes, there actually was the remains of a victorian cat in the above chest. Rather disturbing!

I loved the above quilt, put together by various community members!

A rather impressive collection of taxidermy birds look over the interesting map of the entire Lake District on the left in the above photograph. It was made by Joseph Flintoft, taking 17 years and finally displayed for the first time in 1834. The maker painstakingly made drawings and measurements to ensure it was to scale (3 inches to the mile, horizontally and vertically!) William Wordsworth himself was reported to have viewed it and liked it. It is very fragile but incredibly impressive in person!

I was really struck by the above painting, entitled 'Skaters on Derwentwater' by Joseph Brown Junior. Thought it was quite Lowry-esque, but that's another blog post for another day. Don't accept my poor reflection-ridden photograph though, go and see the real thing yourself!

In the end room was a Heritage Sport exhibition - as part of the lead up to the 2012 Olympics a lot of venues are focusing on this theme, see here for more details. Anyway, there were a lot of old photographs on display and above, these 'Road Skates' - (early rollerblades I guess!) belonging to a local man called Alexander Goodall. He sounded like a pretty interesting man, the display noted that besides his job as a foreman printer "he was particularly fond of climbing and was well known, having written several articles for magazines. He taught shorthand at evening classes and was about to become a member of the St John Ambulance Brigade" before his untimely death in 1903 at 26 in a climbing accident on nearby Skafell Pinnacle.

- The museum was full of these stories about local people which were all really interesting to read. I would highly recommend a visit if you are in the Lake District.