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Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings

1963 establishments in EnglandBromsgroveHistory museums in WorcestershireMuseums established in 1963Open-air museums in England
Use British English from February 2023Windmills in Worcestershire
Avoncroft Windmill
Avoncroft Windmill

Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings is an open-air museum of rescued buildings which have been relocated to its site in Stoke Heath, a district of Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England. Founded in 1963 and opened in 1967, the museum was conceived following the dismantling of a 15th-century timber-framed house in Bromsgrove in 1962 to provide a location for its reconstruction. It became England's first open-air museum and, after the St Fagans National Museum of History in Wales, the second in the United Kingdom. This building is known as the medieval 'Town House' today, though it has been known by other names in the past, including the 'Bromsgrove House' and the 'Merchant's House'. It now houses a collection of domestic, industrial, agricultural and other forms of historic building, the majority dismantled and re-erected. The museum's collection comprises more than 30 buildings and structures which have been relocated from their original sites under threat of demolition, being rebuilt and restored at the museum. This includes a fully functioning windmill and a post WW2 prefab house as used in many towns and cities after the Second World War to provide quick affordable replacements for houses destroyed by bombing. The Arcon V prefabricated house was originally constructed on Moat Lane in Yardley, Birmingham and was transported to the museum in 1981.Weddings and receptions are frequently held in The New Guesten Hall, a building at the museum which was built to incorporate the preserved timber roof of Guesten Hall, originally built next to Worcester Cathedral for entertaining the Prior's guests. The New Guesten Hall is also used by outside parties for concerts, conferences, exhibitions and meetings. The museum's Victorian church, originally built in 1891 at Bringsty Common, Herefordshire, was opened and re-dedicated in 1996 and services are held there during the museum's open season. The church is also licensed for wedding blessings. The other exhibits, which span over 700 years of history, include a perry mill from Redditch, a toll house from Little Malvern, a fibreglass spire from Smethwick, an earth closet, a cruck-frame barn and a counting house.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings
Redditch Road,

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N 52.314 ° E -2.072 °
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Avoncroft Museum of Buildings

Redditch Road
B60 4JR , Stoke Heath
England, United Kingdom
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avoncroft.org.uk

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Avoncroft Windmill
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Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Arts
Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Arts

The Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Arts (1898–1966) was a company of modern artists and designers associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement, but which also embraced other major design motifs. Founded by Walter Gilbert, the guild worked in metal, wood, plaster, bronze, tapestry, glass and other mediums. The Guild received a Royal Warrant in 1908. The Guild's most famous works on public display are the main gates of Buckingham Palace, Canada Gate and Australia Gate, part of Sir Aston Webb's memorial scheme to Queen Victoria. In 1906, Gilbert invited the Birmingham-based stained glass artist Archibald John Davies to establish a glass manufacturing studio within the Guild's premises in Bromsgrove. Trained under Henry Payne at the Birmingham Municipal School of Arts and Crafts, Davies style and approach to glassmaking was firmly rooted in the Arts and Crafts tradition and was thus highly complementary to the broader artistic sentiments of the Guild. Under Davies' forty-seven year tenure, the glass studio was one of the most productive of the Guild's business functions. It produced over 240 windows for locations across Great Britain and more than 100 more for international locations, particularly for churches in Canada and South Africa. The majority of these were privately commissioned memorials for churches, usually involving the reglazing of an existing window in a pre-existing building. Davies also led production of the decorative domes for first-class areas of the passenger liner Orvieto, built for the Orient Steam Navigation Company between 1908 and 1911. The glass studio closed in 1953 following Davies' death. The Guild's fortunes were adversely effected by the great depression during the 1930s. From 1946 the company was managed by George Whewell. By this stage the firm had lost much of its specialist expertise leading Whewell to sub-contract many of the Guild's post-war commissions. As a result, the size of the workforce steadily declined until there was only a skeleton staff. The Guild was closed for good in 1966.