The Food Museum, formerly the Museum of East Anglian Life, is a museum in

Stowmarket Stowmarket ( ) is a market town in Suffolk, England,OS Explorer map 211: Bury St.Edmunds and Stowmarket Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton A2 edition. Publishing Date:2008. on the busy A14 road (Great Britain), A14 trunk ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

, England, which specialises in presenting the agricultural history of East Anglia through a mixture of exhibits and living history demonstrations.

History of the Museum

Grundisburgh Smithy, Museum of East Anglian Rural Life - geograph

The land was originally part of the Home Farm for the Abbot’s Hall estate. The estate dates from medieval times, when it was an outlying manor for St Osyth's Priory in Essex. It passed through numerous owners until it was purchased by the Longe family in 1903.

Mechanisation Mechanization is the process of changing from working largely or exclusively by hand or with animals to doing that work with machinery. In an early engineering text a machine is defined as follows: In some fields, mechanization includes the ...

in the 1950s and 1960s meant that England was in danger of losing long-established skills, equipment, and buildings, if something was not done to rescue them. Local farmer Jack Carter, the Suffolk Local History Council, and other individuals worked to collect, preserve and display objects from rural East Anglia. After several years of temporary exhibitions, Vera and Ena Longe placed of farmland, Abbot’s Hall, its gardens, and 18/20 Crowe Street, in trust to be used as a museum. The Museum opened in 1967. In April 2022, the museum was renamed The Food Museum, a controversial move.

Buildings

The Museum has various buildings on its site, including: * Abbot's Hall — each room explores a different notion of home and belonging in East Anglia. Home is defined in this exhibit as the physical place where we live, but also our sense of belonging to a place. *Edgar's farmhouse — a 14th-century aisled farmhouse "discovered" in

Combs Combs may refer to: Places France * Combs-la-Ville, a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris United Kingdom *Combs, Derbyshire, England *Combs, Suffolk, England United States *Combs, Arkansas, a community *Combs, Kentucky, a com ...

, just south of Stowmarket, and incorporated into a much larger farmhouse dating from the Victorian era. Saved from demolition in 1970, it was the first historic building to be re-erected on the museum site. The first recorded owners were John and Ascelina Adgor, who in 1346 held nearly of arable land, of meadow, of pasture, a

Rood A rood or rood cross, sometimes known as a triumphal cross, is a cross or crucifix, especially the large crucifix set above the entrance to the chancel of a medieval church. Alternatively, it is a large sculpture or painting of the crucifixion ...

of wood and three acres of alderwood in Combs. Evidence suggests that the Adgors survived the

Black Death The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...

and prospered. The building is

Grade II* listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. * Crowe Street Cottages — the last pair of workers' cottages to remain as part of the Abbot's Hall Estate. * Boby Building — features exhibitions of agricultural engines and individual craft workshops, a working

printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in wh ...

and a cinema. In July 1985, a team of apprentices assembled a Whitmore and Binyon horizontal condensing

steam-engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be trans ...

in the building, which had previously been located at the mill of Reuben Rackham (1842-1924) in

Wickham Market Wickham Market is a large village and electoral ward situated in the River Deben valley of Suffolk, England, within the Suffolk Coastal heritage area. It is on the A12 trunk road north-east of the county town of Ipswich, north-east of Wood ...

. It is believed to be the only Whitmore and Binyon steam engine on public display. * William Bone Building — an exhibition on the history of the Ransomes company in East Anglia. *

Eastbridge Windpump Eastbridge Windpump is a smock mill at the Museum of East Anglian Life, Stowmarket, Suffolk, England which has been restored to working order. History ''Eastbridge Windpump'' was probably built in the mid nineteenth century by Robert Martin, th ...

— a

windpump A windpump is a type of windmill which is used for pumping water. Windpumps were used to pump water since at least the 9th century in what is now Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. The use of wind pumps became widespread across the Muslim world an ...

used for draining land in the 19th century. *Alton Watermill — an 18th-century

watermill A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production of ...

which was used to grind corn. Like many of the museum buildings, it was taken apart and then transported to the museum where it was reassembled. The watermill was moved to prevent it being destroyed by the

Alton Water Alton Water (or Alton Reservoir) is a manmade reservoir located on the Shotley peninsula. It is the largest in Suffolk, with a perimeter of over . Construction Due to a shortage of water in the Ipswich area in the 1960s, a list of twenty poten ...

Reservoir. The museum also has two huts depicting scenes of shops, kitchens, and living rooms of the 1950s, and a Victorian schoolroom.

Restoration of Abbot's Hall

The museum was awarded a grant from the

Heritage Lottery Fund The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...

to renovate Abbot's Hall and Crowe Street Cottages. The project was completed in April 2012, and officially opened in June 2012. There are nine exhibition spaces exploring ideas of home and belonging in East Anglia, as well as space for temporary exhibitions. Crowe Street Cottages, which were occupied by workers at Abbot's Hall, have been displayed as they would have looked when the last owner lived there. Abbot's Hall is open year round, providing a permanent centrepiece to the museum. The Hall features a permanent exhibition of the life and works of Welsh folklorist

George Ewart Evans George Ewart Evans (1 April 1909 – 11 January 1988) was a Welsh-born schoolteacher, writer and folklorist who became a dedicated collector of oral history and oral tradition in the East Anglian countryside from the 1940s to 1970s, and prod ...

Events

Since 2011 the museum site has hosted the Stowblues Festival. The festival is organised in partnership with

BBC Radio Suffolk BBC Radio Suffolk is the BBC's local radio station serving the county of Suffolk. It broadcasts on FM, DAB, digital TV and via BBC Sounds from studios on St Matthews Street in Ipswich. According to RAJAR, the station has a weekly audience ...

. In August 2016 the Museum began hosting its biggest event to date, the annual East Anglian Living History Fayre run in partnership with Black Knight Historical.

References

External links

Museum Website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Food Museum, The Museums in Suffolk Open-air museums in England Local museums in Suffolk Agricultural museums in England Steam museums in England Museums established in 1967

Museum of East Anglian Life The Food Museum, formerly the Museum of East Anglian Life, is a museum in Stowmarket, Suffolk, England, which specialises in presenting the agricultural history of East Anglia through a mixture of exhibits and living history demonstrations. His ...