Fred Dibnah casts his eye across Bolton's newest gallery
opened October 23 2010
Bolton Museum's new Lives Gallery looks at the history of the Lancashire worker town and its people from past and present.
Split into three major sections – industrialisation, landscape and lives of residents – the gallery unravels the story of the North-West town.
Hundreds of photographs of pre-World War II Bolton feature in The Worktown Gallery
The gallery shows a
3D film of a meeting between Samuel Crompton and Richard Arkwright, two of the greatest inventors of the Industrial Revolution.
An interactive display illustrates the mechanism of Crompton's Spinning Mule, which allowed mills to produce fine yarn from 1799.
Visitors can also see the Worktown Gallery, taken from the Mass Observation Project. Between 1937 and 1938 Humphrey Spender took more than 900 photographs of Bolton to show how ordinary people lived and worked in an industrial town.
Other highlights include a bronze bust of eccentric TV personality Fred Dibnah and a turnstile from Burnden Park Football Park, where Bolton Wanderers used to play.
Visitors can see a stained glass window taken from Heaton's cotton mill
"Each section of the room is full of fascinating items," says Councillor Elaine Sherrington, Executive Member for Adults and Community Services. "There is something here for everyone to enjoy, whether a Bolton resident or from further afield."
