Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery is a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

Carlisle Carlisle ( , ; from xcb, Caer Luel) is a city that lies within the Northern English county of Cumbria, south of the Scottish border at the confluence of the rivers Eden, Caldew and Petteril. It is the administrative centre of the City ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. Opened by the Carlisle Corporation in 1893, the original building is a converted Jacobean mansion, with extensions added when it was converted. At first the building contained the museum and also a library, an art school and a technical school. The building, including the extensions, is a

Grade I listed building 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 ...

, and the wall, gates and railings in front of the house are separately Grade I listed. The two schools were moved in the 1950s and the library in 1986. The museum expanded into the city Guildhall in 1980 and with new space available from 1986 it underwent an extensive redevelopment over 1989–90 and again in 2000–01. Since May 2011 the museum has been an independent charitable trust, the Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery Trust. It is one of the three members of the Cumbria Museum Consortium, along with Lakeland Arts and the

Wordsworth Trust The Wordsworth Trust is an independent charity in the United Kingdom. It celebrates the life of the poet William Wordsworth, and looks after Dove Cottage in the Lake District village of Grasmere where Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy Wordswort ...

. In 2012–15 and 2015–18 this consortium was one of the 21 museums or consortia (16 in the earlier period) to be funded by

Arts Council England Arts Council England is an arm's length non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is also a registered charity. It was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three s ...

as "Major Partner Museums".

Collections

The museum has large and eclectic collections of zoological,

botanical Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...

and geological material. The plant collector,

Clara Winsome Muirhead Clara Winsome Muirhead (6 January 1916 – 7 March 1985) was a Scottish botanist and plant collector who spent most of her career at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and was an expert on mosses, cacti, and succulents. Life Clara Winsome M ...

worked at the museum in the 1940s and donated a large collection of botanical specimens to the museum. The fine and decorative arts collections include works by Burne-Jones and other

Pre-Raphaelite The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Jam ...

artists, as well as

Stanley Spencer Sir Stanley Spencer, CBE RA (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959) was an English painter. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the sma ...

Winifred Nicholson ''From Bedroom Window, Bankshead'', date unknown, private collection. Typical of Nicholson's impressionist work, combining still life with landscape. Rosa Winifred Nicholson (née Roberts; 21 December 1893 – 5 March 1981) was a British p ...

Sheila Fell Sheila Fell (20 July 1931 – 15 December 1979) was an English artist. She was born at Aspatria, Cumberland in 1931. Although she lived in London for the greater part of her life, she devoted her career to painting the Cumberland landscape. Biog ...

and Phil Morsman.

Musical instruments

There is collection of stringed instruments including a violin by

Andrea Amati Andrea Amati was a luthier, from Cremona, Italy. Amati is credited with making the first instruments of the violin family that are in the form we use today. Several of his instruments survive to the present day, and some of them can still be ...

from the royal collection of France.

Roman Britain

There were two

Roman fort In the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, the Latin word ''castrum'', plural ''castra'', was a military-related term. In Latin usage, the singular form ''castrum'' meant 'fort', while the plural form ''castra'' meant 'camp'. The singular and ...

s in Carlisle, one of which,

Uxelodunum Uxelodunum (with the alternative Roman name of Petriana and the modern name of Stanwix Fort) was a Roman fort. It was the largest fort on Hadrian's Wall, and is now buried beneath the suburb of Stanwix, in Carlisle, Cumbria, England. Roman ...

(or

Stanwix Stanwix is a district of Carlisle, Cumbria in North West England. The ward population (called Stanwix Urban) had a population taken at the 2011 census of 5,934. It is located on the north side of River Eden, across from Carlisle city centre ...

to use the modern toponym), was the largest along the length of

Hadrian's Wall Hadrian's Wall ( la, Vallum Aelium), also known as the Roman Wall, Picts' Wall, or ''Vallum Hadriani'' in Latin, is a former defensive fortification of the Roman province of Britannia, begun in AD 122 in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. Ru ...

. The museum houses important collections and temporary exhibitions associated with Hadrian's Wall.Roman...

Post-Roman history

The human history collection also features permanent exhibitions dedicated to the

Vikings Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

and the

Border Reivers Border reivers were raiders along the Anglo-Scottish border from the late 13th century to the beginning of the 17th century. They included both Scottish and English people, and they raided the entire border country without regard to their v ...

Accolades

Tullie House Museum won the annual Family Friendly Museum Award (sponsored by the

Telegraph Media Group Telegraph Media Group Limited (TMG; previously the Telegraph Group) is the proprietor of ''The Daily Telegraph'' and ''The Sunday Telegraph''. It is a subsidiary of Press Holdings. David and Frederick Barclay acquired the group on 30 July 2004, ...

) in 2015.

Gallery

File:Tullie House.jpg, Tullie House Gardens File:Centre piece of Roman Jupiter mount (FindID 195405-153331).jpg, Centre piece of Roman Jupiter mount File:Arthur Hughes - The Rift within the Lute.jpg, Arthur Hughes - The Rift within the Lute File:Ancient Roman artefacts at Tullie House (6).JPG, Roman gravestone File:Court mantua dress at Tullie House Museum A (2).jpg, Court mantua dress File:Swans at Tullie House Museum (1a).JPG, 19th century Swans File:Ancient Roman artefacts at Tullie House (1).JPG, Ancient Roman tombstone File:Ancient Roman artefacts at Tullie House (13).JPG, Ancient Roman plaque File:Medieval coin, Rickerby Hoard Coin H6 2016T837 (FindID 809240).jpg, Medieval Rickerby Hoard Coin File:Langdale axe (FindID 846778).jpg, Langdale axe File:Samuel Bough - Cricket Match at Edenside, Carlisle CBR THMA 1912 1.jpg, Cricket Match at Edenside File:Cat crossing Castle Street - geograph.org.uk - 1638412.jpg, Side Entrance

References

External links

*
iRomans
Website about Carlisle and the region's Roman history * {{authority control Buildings and structures in Carlisle, Cumbria Museums in Cumbria Art museums and galleries in Cumbria Houses in Cumbria Museums established in 1893 Grade I listed buildings in Cumbria Natural history museums in England Archaeological museums in England Geology museums in England History museums in Cumbria Textile museums in the United Kingdom Fashion museums in the United Kingdom Musical instrument museums in England Local museums in Cumbria 1893 establishments in England Tourist attractions in Cumbria