Bolton Art Gallery, Library & Museum

The origins of the current museum date to 1852 when the town adopted the Libraries and Museums Act, leading to the opening of the town's first Library in Victoria Square, now site of the Nationwide Building Society. At that time, the town did not have a public collection to create a museum. The first collection donated was of fossils in the Library's opening year of 1853. The collections of the Museum grew slowly, and by 1876, hosted a good collection of scientific specimens and ethnographic objects. With the collections growing, there was public support for a separate museum, however, the local authority was not willing to use its funds for this purpose. Chadwick In 1876, Dr Samuel Taylor Chadwick, a wealthy medical doctor and a benefactor of the town, left a bequest of £5000 to create a museum in Bolton. This also encouraged many others to donate items for the museum. His bequest specified the funds were to be used for the 'building, furnishing and maintenance of a Museum of Natural History in the Bolton Park' with free entry, this early museum was located at Queens Park. The Chadwick Museum was chaired by Councillor B.A. Dobson and its first professional curator William Waller Midgley was employed in 1883. The museum opened in 1884 with three floors with displays. The Museum added collections of national importance including items of textile machinery, textile samples and Egyptian antiquities with an organised structure, with minerals, rocks and fossils in the basement displays, on the ground floor were zoology displays of stuffed animals, birds' nests and eggs, shells, and insects, the first floor consisted of displays of anthropology, Egyptology and other antiquities and other curiosities. A donation of meteorological instruments in 1885 saw Midgley given the role of 'Observator' and became a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. becoming a music and performance education centre in 2019. The Grade I listed Hall i' th' Wood was donated as a museum for Samuel Crompton by Lord Leverhulme in 1899, opening in 1902 after restoration. Leverhulme had also proposed a total redesign of Bolton which included an expanded Chadwick Museum at Queen's Park, this plan was rejected but parts of it gave rise to the building of the current Le Mans Crescent in the 1930s. Smithills Hall opened in 1963, a nature trail museum opened in its Park in 1975, and Little Bolton Town Hall operated as a museum from 1979. All branch museums except Hall i' th' Wood and Smithills closed due to budget cuts, a gallery at Le Mans Crescent became the local history and archive section, now managed by the museum. Large collections of over 400,000 museum objects formerly displayed are held in storage off-site; details are contained within the museum's Acquisition and Disposal Policy. The Chadwick Resource Centre is a museum collections store and research centre housing approximately 60,000 objects that opened in 2012 at Union Road, Bolton, BL2 2HE. ==Le Mans Crescent==

The current Le Mans Crescent Museum was opened by the Mayor in 1934, displaying natural history and art. The aquarium opened in 1941, the full fitting out of the museum was delayed due to World War 2 until 1947. The Museum received £3.8 million in grant funding to update and improve displays in 2018. Collections The collections include natural history, Egyptology, archaeology, art, local history, and one of Britain's oldest public aquariums. These are housed, together with Bolton Central Library, in one end of the Bolton Civic Centre, designed by local architects, Bradshaw Gass & Hope and opened in 1939. The museum has two outlying locations, Smithills Hall and Hall i' th' Wood. The collections include material from many private collectors, including geological specimens from the estate of Caroline Birley. Significant collections within Bolton Museum include the collection of Humphrey Spender material. Egyptology, Archaeology & World Cultures The archaeological collection at Bolton of over 10,000 archaeological objects is one of the largest regional collections in the UK. British Archaeology The British Archaeology collection has approximately 4000 items from British sites since the 1880s and includes the contents of the Silverdale Museum from mid 19th century excavations in locations including Warwickshire and Kent of items from the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Roman material from Derbyshire and elsewhere. The museum also holds the contents of the Castleton Museum and a small number of local finds dating from the Mesolithic to the post-medieval period. Botany Botany collection consists of approximately 60,000 specimens consists largely of dried specimens. Sculpture There are 50 items collected in the 1950 and 1960s in the sculpture collection, most of which are mid 20th century British bronzes and include the artists Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Jacob Epstein. 2019: OUTing the Past and Desire, Love, Identity In March 2019, Bolton Museum hosted the OUTing the Past Festival which featured talks and presentations on LGBT+ history and two performances of "The Adhesion of Love", a dramatization of a visit by a member of the Eagle Street College to Walt Whitman in 1891. In the summer of 2019, the Bolton Museum hosted the British Museum touring exhibition "Desire Love Identity" exhibition in its renovated temporary exhibition space. The exhibition told the story of LGBT+ history in the UK with this iteration featuring several Bolton specific objects and documents to tell the story of local LGBT+ history in the context of the major national history. The exhibition also featured "Museum Monologues", five in-gallery dramatisations produced by Inkbrew Productions. Talks given included Matt Cain in conversation with James Edgington, discussing his book 'The Madonna of Bolton'. Displays included recalling the progress and creation of 'Bolton Pride' and looked back at the local history of activism, campaigns, events and figures from Bolton's LGBT+ past including displays of photographs and documents of Bolton's first LGB youth group, YGLIB volunteers meeting Anne, Princess Royal. There were also exhibits illustrating the roles of James William Wallace (of the Eagle Street College), Vesta Tilley and Humphrey Spender. ==See also==