Museum Service
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| The Servants' Quarters |
Housed in the Servants' Quarters at the Shugborough Estate, the County Museum features the restored Victorian kitchen, laundry and brewhouse, as well as galleries and temporary exhibitions illustrating Staffordshire life over the past 200 years.
Museum opening times
14th March - 29th October 2008
11am-5pm daily
For further information on Shugborough opening arrangements go to
www.shugborough.org.uk
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The kitchen and laundry have been restored to around 1870-80. You can find out how the domestic servants cooked on the cast-iron range, washed the clothes with dolly pegs and smoothed the sheets with the box mangle. The brewhouse has been restored to working order and includes many original features. In the 18th and 19th centuries beer was part of the staple diet and servants were given a daily allowance of around 1 gallon as part of their wages. Titanic brewery use the wood-fired copper to brew beer in the traditional manner on certain weekends throughout the summer. |
The street area in the museum shows some of the shops which were a typical feature of many Staffordshire towns and villages in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The general goods store was run by the Page family at Yoxall, near Lichfield, and supplied everything from coffee, marmalade and biscuits to paraffin and mousetraps. The tailor's shop was run by the Wheeldon family of Abbots Bromley until material shortages forced its closure in 1945. The pharmacy is a reconstruction of a typical shop of the early 20th century, with poultices and poisons from Leek and Stafford.
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| Puppets from a collection at the County Museum |
The Abbots Bromley Puppet Museum is a wonderful world-wide collection assembled by Douglas Hayward which came to the County Museum in 1993 when the original museum closed. Find out all you need to know about glove puppets, shadow puppets and marionettes.
The health and hygiene gallery takes a look at changes in the ways we treat and prevent disease and illness. Surgery, dentistry, midwifery and personal hygiene have all seen great developments - outdoor privies, washstands, tooth keys and leeches are no longer everyday items!
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The reconstructed schoolroom captures the atmosphere of a single class village school at the end of the 19th century. Today's schoolchildren regularly use the room for a lesson in living history.
Find out about the lives of children outside school in the children at work and play gallery.
What was it like to work in a shoe factory, pick oakum in a workhouse or be an apprentice? What toys and games did children play before pokemon and playstations? You can find out the answer to all these questions and more in this gallery. |
In the
coachhouse the Anson family's travelling coach or 'dormeuse' can be seen, as well as carriages which belonged to the 20th Earl of Shrewsbury from nearby Ingestre, and two fine early 19th century carriages from the Dyott family of Freeford, near Lichfield.
There are Children's Activity sheets for the County Museum at Shugborough
'Knowing Their Place' - Bringing 19th century domestic service at Shugborough to life
This display looks at the sources and objects which tell us who the servants were, where they lived, their quality of life and the technologies they used in their daily work. You can listen to former servants' memories, see original servants' costume and objects, and play 'detective' to find out more about life as a servant at Shugborough during the 19th Century.
There is a Children's History Quiz Activity for the Knowing Their Place exhibition.
Last Modified:
17/07/2008 10:35:48
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