The best "little" museum that you have ever been to

Helmshore Textile Museums in Lancashire – a working pre-industrial wool fulling mill powered by a water wheel and a later yarn mill. You can see the process of transformation from raw cotton and cotton waste into yarn and every hour the staff run the mules and you can watch 3.5 kms of yarn being spun every time the machine makes a pass across the floor. The demo is given by local worthies who often have amazing Dibnah-type accents. The AV display is especially good, you learn a lot about the pre-industrial wool weavers and the patterns of life and work that created the incredible packhorse trails that we enjoy for cycling here in the Pennines.

Swiss Military Museum in Full….

http://www.militaer-museum.ch/xml_1/internet/de/intro.cfm

Probably not a small museum but stuffed full of stuff and a lot of it gets driven around at the weekend.

Its twinned with a bunker tour….

Not sure about the best but the Abingdon collection certainly left an impression on me, some nice cars at a guys house and loads of good motor trade memorabilia……….. and a Nazi display in a sealed room in his basement.

http://theabingdoncollection.com/

He seemed to have quite an affection for our blond haired, blue eyed mate too and kept telling him he could have been an officer.

Little bit of selfless marketing here but my old man and I own a cycle museum (Facebook The cycle museum walton hall and gardens).

Its a small, obviously, family run museum, completely free of charge set in the stable block of a country estate between Daresbury and Warrington.

We’ve got a great collection, even if i do say so myself, of bikes from all walks of life, corners of the world and right through the ages. If you speak nicely to my old fella he’ll also let you ride some of the bikes too.

Any website for that cycle museum?

If you are in Oslo you have to go here.

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The Pitt Rivers in Oxford[/url]

Probably a bit big for harry’s tastes, and the man himself (like all the best Victorian Explorers) was a bit of a shit, but the museum’s genius ensemble of the most bizarre collection of “stuff” you’ll ever see under one roof will have you wandering around going “look at this!”.

Not a museum, but if you leave the ferry at Ouistreham (Caen..) and head to Pegasus Bridge, there’s a wee cafe right next to the bridge. Well worth a visit if you’re passing, there’s so much memorabilia packed inside floor to ceiling.
Coffee’s good too.

One of my favourites was the toy museum in the old school house at Mullion Cove, sadly gone now. It was run by an enthusiastic Austrian guy who really brought the place to life. Amongst the vintage automata in one corner there was a large scale model of the insides of a mine complete with workings and machinery all running beautifully.

Really interesting guy who clearly loved his work, guess he just couldn’t make it pay 🙁

The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses

Found this interesting in Fraserburgh.

Whilst waiting for a train home, actually because there’s nothing else to do in Llandrindod.

Surprisingly, enjoyed it.

Here

if you like model railways/trains this place is worth a visit

http://www.pendonmuseum.com/

If you’re at Quex then you’re just round the corner from Manston airport museum:

http://www.rafmanston.co.uk/

Great little place run by dusty old volunteers who will talk all day if you let them. Train set for the kids to play on, if you time it right they can climb in the planes and Sea King helichopter. My two drag the grandparents there every time we go to stay.

The Spitfire museum is just next door too.

If you happen to be around Lake Como then check out the cycling museum at Madonna del Ghisallo.

While it is strange to describe a museum whose buildings include aircraft hangers as “little”, I suppose it’s all relative. So I’d agree that Tangmere is great. It has interesting exhibits and a good tour. Also as a nice touch I like that the aircraft on external display ring the car park. By putting them next to cars it really serves to demonstrate how even small aircraft are still rather large objects.

An even smaller aircraft museum that I was impressed by is the Jet Age Museum[/url] in Gloucester. Visitors are allowed into their Vulcan, Hunter and Gnat cockpit sections and there are some knowledgeable guides to tell you about them too. Plus it’s small shop is very cleverly stocked, with model kits of pretty much every aircraft they have in the museum available – a clever touch that much larger aviation museums seem to miss.

If we’re doing small museums near Barnsley (Darfield?), how about Cawthorne village museum ? here

http://www.aworldinminiature.com/

just off M6 at Carlisle – has an excellent model shop next to it too!

In Cornwall

http://www.museumofwitchcraft.com/%5B/url%5D

Very interesting about what broomsticks were actually used for….

The lighthouse at Start Point near Dartmouth. Just me the wife and the chappy. Very charming gentleman who gave us a very gentle but effective sell for the lighthouse tour when stopped there on a walk.

One of the last fresnel lens lighthouses in the UK. Might even have been replaced by LED already. The light comes from one 1,000W bulb – visible to 27 miles (or whatever – to the horizon, basically)

Helmshore Textile Museums in Lancashire

I assume it’s improved – was tedious in the extreme when I was (repeatedly) dragged there in my youth.

There’s a cracking little motorcycle museum at Scaleby near Carlisle (it’s signposted from the A689 and the A6071). It’s in a bloke’s garden, basically, in some large outbuildings. He specializes in Coventry Eagles, but he’s got allsorts, including a few cars. He’s a bit of an older Guy Martin type – ex-TT racer. Well worth a visit!

The Savings Bank Museum was surprisingly small and interesting!
http://www.savingsbanksmuseum.co.uk/

Littledean Jail in FoD. Boasting some pretty macabre stuff, but very much worth a visit if you like that sort of thing:

http://www.littledeanjail.com/

2 years ago we went to San Fran on holiday and took a bit of a road trip on the way to Yosemite.

We came across the Winchester Mystery house.

Welcome to the Winchester Mystery House®

Amazing place, made even better by Stephen, our guide.
Well worth a visit if you’re in that part of the world.

Museum of things washed up on the beach really interesting

http://www.kaapskil.nl/UK

http://www.cyclemuseum.org.uk/

There’s a little museum on an old airfield near the OP’s one – probably 30 miles SW of it as I cycled past it on a day ride from Polstead.

+1 for Nickc and Pitt Rivers in Oxford. The sort of eclectic mix of exhibits and chaotic layout you’d picture a museum to be as a kid, made up of the sort of things a Victorian gent travelling the world plundering local cultures collecting interesting artefacts would accrue, plus some locally sourced and slightly underwhelming fossils.

And each of the pillars on the upper hall is a different mineral 8)

The Rotunda museum Scarborough is good for half an hour.

Not necessarily the best, but The Bugatti Trust museum at Prescott Glos. is worth a visit.

A small but facinating and well presented museum

Welcome to The Bugatti Trust

Not always open so worth phoning ahead

+1 for The Pitt Rivers museum- Nickc’s description is spot on-

Pickers – Member
Not a museum, but if you leave the ferry at Ouistreham (Caen..) and head to Pegasus Bridge, there’s a wee cafe right next to the bridge. Well worth a visit if you’re passing, there’s so much memorabilia packed inside floor to ceiling.
Coffee’s good too.

The museum at Pegasus Bridge is excellent and very moving, too. So is the Museum of Army Flying at Middle Wallop – they are ‘twinned’, as it were.

Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle. Just for the Swan thingy really.

Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds if you have a strong stomach and/or giving small children nightmares.

Always had a soft spot for Cliffe Castle in Keighley, too. Obviously no budget, but they always tried hard – some top taxidermy, exhibitions and indoor beehive too. And free, so good for kids. Might be shut now, I know it was for a while.

I stopped at a B&B in Darlington years ago and the whole place was a little military museum, it even had a maxim machine gun on tripod in the guests lounge. Wierd but brilliant The Greenbank Hotel

A lot of fascinating items in this discussion. Since I can’t conveniently visit the UK entries, here are a couple from my part of the world.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology[/url] is not like any museum I have ever seen.

Closer to home, more of interest to bicyclists and run by my good friend Joe Breeze, is the Marin Museum of Bicycling[/url].

My attic. 🙂

globalti – due to my old fella being an IT dinosaur and me not having enough time to sleep and eat at times, we haven’t got a website I’m afraid.

The links others put up are for another cycling museum in mid wales, which I think has now closed.

As I say, we’ve got a facebook page, search for The Cycle Museum Walton Hall and Gardens.

+1 for the Dartmoor Prison Museum.
Fascinating place.

The Fossil Museum at the Square and Compass in the Purbecks, near Charlie The Bikemonger.

No idea whats in the museum as I’ve never made it through the pub, but having a museum in a pub is a great idea!

I always wanted to go to the Yelverton Paperweight Musuem but sadly it is now closed.

I can’t believe no one’s mentioned The London Cartoon Museum[/url] yet. Small but worth a visit for a healthy dose of childhood nostalgia.

Little Ottle Museum, not one but TWO Medieval woolforks!

http://www.littleottlemuseum.org.uk/