Experience the history of Thirsk in the house where Thomas Lord, founder of Lord's Cricket Ground, was born in 1755. Explore rooms full of exhibits featuring local life and industry, cricketing memorabilia, farming equipment, furniture, costumes and toys. Marvel at the bones of our Saxon Giant and shudder at the legend of the Busby Stoop Chair!
Thirsk Museum is in Kirkgate, just across the road from The World of James Herriot in the market town of Thirsk, North Yorkshire. Admission is free. There is a ramped entrance to the ground floor but narrow stairs limit access for wheelchair users. Groups and school parties of up to 30 can be accommodated (both during and outside normal opening times) by prior arrangement.
Thirsk Museum is in Kirkgate, just across the road from The World of James Herriot in the market town of Thirsk, North Yorkshire. Admission is free. There is a ramped entrance to the ground floor but narrow stairs limit access for wheelchair users. Groups and school parties of up to 30 can be accommodated (both during and outside normal opening times) by prior arrangement.
Services
Thirsk Museum was established in 1975 with the aim of preserving and displaying items that told something about the past generations who lived in the area. Two years later it opened its doors to the public and has been welcoming visitors from around the world ever since. The building chosen for the Museum is itself of historical interest.
Discover the legend behind one of Thirsk's most intriguing artefacts: the Busby Stoop Chair, cursed by Thomas Busby in 1702. Read how a dispute between a local forger and a drunkard spiralled into murder and a curse placed upon this chair. Evoking the farming life of the 1930's and 40's, this room contains agricultural and dairy tools, a collection of antique animal traps and a display of the blacksmith's craft.
Over two hundred photographs of Thirsk and its neighbouring villages have been chosen to create a vivid visual impression of a period at once familiar and remote. Views of streets and buildings are juxtaposed with images of people to build up a fascinating record, not only of physical development but also of changes in costume and custom, transport and trading, sport and entertainment.
Reviews (9)
Cath Simpkins
Dec 16, 2021
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Rachael Eason
Sep 29, 2020
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William Rees
Sep 27, 2019
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Barbara Proud
Jul 07, 2019
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Roland Clarke
Jul 03, 2019
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John B. Webster
Dec 06, 2018
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Julie Durdan
Jul 19, 2017
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Steve Garey
Dec 01, 2016
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An exceptionally interesting trip down memory lane. An eclectic nostalgic mix of memorabilia ranging from a cursed chair that brought doom to those who sat in it, through to fossils millions of years old; not forgetting the cricketing founder of Lords, a working comptometer, olde worlde rooms, bygone farming and kitchen equipment and local history galore. Fascinating. Well worth a visit.
David Lewis
Sep 15, 2016
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