Museums of the tiny, odd, strange or obscure variety

[Captain Crunch]

This is a thread about museums.  Not the Fucking Massive Cor Blimey City Centre Big Jobs you see around, no, I mean those tiny museums which are notable either by the size of the building (converted houses usually) or by the specific nature of the collection.


Recently someone mentioned The Fan Museum in Greenwich:

http://www.fan-museum.org/

That's a good example.  Dull, but still a good example.


More interestingly, the Kirkaldy Testing Museum, also linked recently looks brilliant.  I'll be paying a visit in the summer, maybe after the sewer tour.


I was going to mention the dodgy crystal museum in Fort William but my memory of that one is a bit hazy.  It was great though, a whole load of crystals under UV light with soothing sounds playing over the tannoy.  Lovely.


Even further afield, Cranberry World in Plymouth, MA is brilliant.  Here's a visitor extract:

Ocean Spray's Cranberry visitor's center in downtown Plymouth, within walking distance of Plymouth Rock and the Wax museum. Admittance is free, and you get to walk through the History of the Cranberry exhibit with the obligatory "Indians with Cranberries" diorama then on to the larger "How Cranberries are Processed" videos and exhibits. Take a picture of a loved one next to the giant cranberry model or the cranberry bog.
The highlight comes at the end of the self-guided tour when you enter the kitchen and get to try Ocean Spray products. About 12-15 enormous tanks, each holding a different variety of Ocean Spray juice (some are prototypes, not available to the public), are open to taste. When I was there they were offering samples of cranberry mustard on pretzels. The best part of Cranberry World, in my opinion, was that by showing your receipt at the door you could come in at any time during that day and go through the sampling room again and again.

The giant cross-section is really something, it's massive.  In fact, the whole place is massive, it looks like a converted aircraft hanger.  The displays are fascinating and there's always a touch of surrealism as you walk around thinking 'ooh, cranberries'.

I can't seem to find an official website for Cranberry World but this is a text version of the museum.

So, are there any museums or visitor centres or things you would like to mention?  The smaller and more obscure the better.

Thanks.

[extradave]

Coventry Toy Museum

Went with my Girlfriend when we were 'courting'.

Its a small converted house full of toys, and very disconcerting.

I would recommend it if I didn't think it would cause every one of you (even the more deranged on here) to lose sleep.

[Jemble Fred]

I *love* obscure and strange museums.

I think Bath must have the largest number of museums outside London, it;s ridiculous. As well as the obvious Tap Rooms/Roman Baths, you've got the American Museum, the Building of Bath museum, the Post Office museum, the Herchel Somethingorother Museum... Just racks of 'em, down backstreets and out in the sticks.

My favourite as a child though was the Motor Museum in Tal Y Bont, just outside Barmouth. It couldn't have been much more than a shed, with a few old bangers and a 'scene from the 1930s' made out of old shop mannequins.

I can see myself becoming the kind of person who's a custodian of some creepy old museum, in my dotage.

[23 Daves]

I've been to a Wool Museum in Australia, which didn't appear to have updated any of its exhibits or information since 1975.  It had this fantastic piece of health and safety advice (or "wool propaganda" as it should be more accurately known) inside:



The entire museum was also built in the shape of a giant sheep:



There's also a Penis Museum in Iceland which was closed when I attempted to visit it, and I'm lead to understand that there's a Cats Eyes Museum somewhere in East Anglia whose primary attraction is a giant mechanical cat who "dances" on some reflective road safety products to give you an idea of how their self-cleaning mechanism works.  I've always wanted to see this, but I've never been particularly arsed enough to travel a few hundred miles for it.

[NoSleep]

I love the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, London. It's been transformed somewhat now (into a museum about cultures around the world), but it used to still bear traces of being the private collection of the man who founded Horniman's Tea, including some bogus exhibits like the 'torture chair'.
The building is distinctive and the gardens are nice when it's sunny.
I've heard that MacGregor Mathers, the head of the magical order The Golden Dawn (Aleister Crowley & W.B.Yeats were members), used to be the curator at one time.
They have a nice collection of musical instruments from around the world and through the ages with interact displays to allow you to hear some of them being played in context (including some rare field recordings - they should make some CDs of this stuff).
One of those places I have to visit every couple of years, just to see how it's getting on, like an old friend.

[SetToStun]

Two in Prague spring to mind: the Museum of Torture Implements, which is just brilliant although some bits do make your blood run cold when you think about them; and the St. Michael Mystery, which is a sort-of museum of the history of Prague done in an almost completely surreal way. In fact I'd go so far as to say any description of it would sell it short. Go and see it - it's just off the Old Town Square, but it can be a bugger to find. As for the MTI, it moves around a bit, apparently. It's often to be found in a former royal building on the OTS side of the Charles Bridge.

[quadraspazzed]

The museum in Bangor (Wales) is pretty shite - though there not being much in the way anything to do in Bangor I visited it about ten times in three years (excluding for archeology seminars).

There's a small Jewish museum in Dublin, but I've never been in. I tried to go once, but my brain was switched off and I wandered up on a Saturday afternoon, idiot that I am.

And there used to be this little museum in a town not far from me, but it closed in the early 90s. My dad did manage to blag some of the cooler artifacts - a WWI bayonet, an old gunpowder holder, a pair of old school handcuffs and a couple of WWI helmets. So now we have musuem in our house - sorta.

[duckorange]

I shall be in Yeovil this weekend.

While I am there, I dare say I shall be eschewing the delights of the Fleet Air Arm museum for the far more fascinating Museum of Bakelite

On second thoughts, it's going to be Concorde again.

[Marv Orange]

[Mr. Analytical]

I went to the surgical museum at the Royal College of Surgeons... it's great.  They have an 8 foot skeleton and more freaks and severed body parts than you can shake an engorged penis at.

There's also that mad museum on chancery Lane in London which is just some eccentric bloke's house.  Never been but have heard it's excellent.

I'll also warmly recommend the Royal Army Museum next to Chelsea Hospital.  I used to go every wednesday afternoon as a kid but it hasn't been done up in about 20 years and is fantastically creaky and weird when compared to the far more famous and brilliant Imperial War Museum.  It really is like stepping back in time to the 1980's.

[Cambrian Times]

Barnet Museum - lots of gubbins about the Battle and a deactivated bomb.

[quadraspazzed]

I tried to go to the Karl Marx Memorial Library in London once, but it was on a Friday and it was closed. Fucking lazy communists. So I went to the Guardian vistors' centre, which was about as exciting as it sounds.

Is Longstanton Spice Museum real? This would suggest so, but the contact email makes me think not.

[LeboviciAB84]

Well, there's the Hereford Button Museum, of course. And two car-based childhood favourites of mine: Cars Of The Stars in Keswick, and le Musée Automobile de la Sarthe. (Thanks to repeated visits and poring over the guidebook, I could pretty much recite the latter collection, Brian Sewell-fashion, by the time I was eight.)

[CookACat]

I went all the way to Philadelphia and the Edgar Allen Poe House was shut. On a cheerier note, the tiny Bronte and Austen Houses are good, and the oddest was perhaps a salt-mine museum in Krakow, featuring the life of Jesus carved in salt.



http://www.worldssmallestmuseum.com/ has lots! of exclamation! marks!

[Beagle 2]

I nearly moved into a house near Leicester Gas Museum once. It looks like the most depressing place on earth from the outside, in fact I wasn't entirely sure it wasn't long since abandoned until I just thought to check for a website.

But there you go. You want to know about gas, I would imagine that's the place for you.

[non capisco]

I've got half a mind to go to the tiny 'Crystal Palace Museum' in Crystal Palace park, just to see how much you could possibly fit in such a small building and still justify as a museum. The story of the Crystal Palace being built in late Victorian years in view of being an 'eight wonder' and burning down twice is also pretty interesting. However, it's only open at weekends and I always forget.

[Good Grief]

The town museum of Hertford is quite an oddity: it's just full of stuff you might expect to find in a museum, with no particular theme. It's like a dumping ground for all the stuff other museums couldn't find room for, from Japanese armour made out of bamboo to stuffed badgers. I said 'thanks' on the way out but I shouldn't have.

[Suttonpubcrawl]

I've been to this:


It is what it says it is, a very small house. You go in, look around, and then go straight out again.

[neveragain]

In Amsterdam, there is (among other delights) a Cat Museum. And, yes, this is a museum of live cats. More like a cattery really, except for the charge and the fact that it's located on a sizeable boat - hence the rather amusing Dutch spelling 'de Pussenbooatz' or something similar. Anyway, one of my party went to investigate and upon her return the rest of the group were alive with questions! 'How many cats were there?' I asked. 'Five.'