Blog

Ripon Museum Trust volunteers from The Workhouse Museum have worked on a major new online exhibition presented by The Workhouse Network called More Than Oliver Twist and presented on the Google Arts & Culture platform. The More Than Oliver Twist project set out to discover the real stories of people in the workhouse system through the 1881 census returns. Researched and…

In June 2020, Ripon Museum Trust was fortunate to receive a Heritage Emergency Fund grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The projects this grant supported have been completed successfully at the end of October 2020. The grant provided vital support through the most challenging of times during Lockdown #1 and then as restrictions relaxed and we were able to re-open. We were…

Ripon Museum Trust has been awarded £117,500 as part of the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) to help face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and to ensure they have a sustainable future, the Culture Secretary has announced today. Ripon Museum Trust is one of 1,385 cultural and creative organisations across the country receiving urgently needed support. …

We are delighted to be able to welcome visitors back to Ripon Museums. The Workhouse Museum & Garden and the Prison & Police Museum will both open on Wednesday 15th July. It is planned to reopen the Courthouse Museum on 1st August. Helen Thornton, Director of Ripon Museum Trust said "I am so excited to be able to offer…

Ripon Museum Trust has received £40,100 from The National Lottery Heritage to safeguard its heritage buildings and to provide much needed support for essential costs whilst managing through this crisis period. Since the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown began Ripon Museum Trust has been without the visitors, volunteers and staff essential to the upkeep of the three museums – The Workhouse…

Edward Theodore Davison was born in 1869, to parents George and Elizabeth. George was a wholesale grocer and, in 1871, the family lived in Stockton-on-Tees with Elizabeth’s mother, Elizabeth Jebb, and a servant Phoebe Walter. Ten years later, in 1881, George, Elizabeth and Edward were living together in Stockton, without Elizabeth’s mother or Phoebe.   On 28…

Emily and Mabel Seed, mother and daughter, were arrested in 1920 in Scarborough for shoplifting. Their crime is recorded in a criminal record book created in Scarborough in the 1940s, held in the collections of Ripon Museums. The book is one of a series, recording every person arrested and charged in Scarborough, along with any previous convictions elsewhere, from the late 180…

Call for Artists now open! We’re delighted to announce that our brief is now live for the 2021 contemporary art commission at Ripon Museum Trust. As part of an exciting phase at Ripon Museum Trust, we are working with contemporary artists to bring the history of our three museums to life in a new way. We are inviting artists…

February’s Object of the Month is a book containing photographs and information about criminals arrested in Scarborough. ‘Photograph Book No. 8’ originates from the Scarborough Borough Police Force, and it contains ‘mugshots’ of approximately 700 arrested persons, along with the personal details about each individual and his or her alleged offences. The volume dates from the 192…

For the past year, we have been creating a new home for some of our museum collections. When we vacated our old offices in the summer of 2018, we knocked down the dividing wall to create a bigger space that could be used as a museum store. The room was stripped out and painted and vinyl flooring replaced the old carpet.…