About British Museum

About British Museum

Founded in 1753 by Act of Parliament, from the collections of Sir Hans Sloane, the British Museum is one of the great museums of the world, showing the works of man from prehistoric to modern times with collections drawn from the whole world. Famous objects include the Rosetta Stone, sculptures from the Parthenon, the Sutton Hoo and Mildenhall treasures and the Portland Vase. There is also a programme of special exhibitions and daily gallery tours, talks and guided tours.

British Museum Facilities

Opening Times	Open daily 10.00 - 17.30. Selected galleries are open late on Thursdays and Fridays until 20.30.
Payment Facilities	Free entry

British Museum Address

Address:	British Museum Great Russell Street London WC1B 3DG
Telephone:	+44 (0)20 7323 8000
Email:	information@britishmuseum.org
Website:	http://www.britishmuseum.org

Behind the scenes Museum in London

More than five million people pass through the doors of the British Museum every year. They come to view the galleries, take in temporary exhibitions, participate in events or just to spend a few moments in one of London’s most spectacular public buildings.

Working behind the scenes to make these visits possible are more than 1,000 members of staff, from cleaners, curators and conservators, to security, scientists and the schools team. Some provide the very latest scholarship to inform the displays, while some analyse and treat objects to make sure they will be preserved for the future. Others make sure the British Museum building is the best possible place to house those objects and provide access to them.

This is no simple task. The building occupies 75,000 square metres. That’s an area equivalent to nine football pitches or four times the arena of the Coliseum in Rome. Every morning before the doors open at 10.00 - and there are over 3,500 doors - it is made ready to receive its visitors. Cases are cleaned and dusted, objects are moved on or off display for study, conservation, or to be sent around the world on a touring exhibition. Light-bulbs are changed – almost 7,000 every year – floors cleaned, and brass handrails polished.
Perhaps the toughest maintenance assignment is the regular cleaning of the 3,300 panes of glass in the Great Court ceiling. It is a monumental task for a team of specially-trained abseilers and takes weeks at a time.
Back on the ground, the safety of visitors and the collection is maintained by a team of 320 security and gallery staff who monitor the building and galleries 24 hours a day.
In this section, we take a look at just some of the ways Museum staff take care of the collection, how research - sometimes in far away locations or in the science lab - helps us understand the collection, as well as work that goes into building the collection.

1995. musuem opens at Renishaw Hall Stablex complex

Musuem and Cafe opens

It was the summer of 1994 when Sir Reresby and Lady Sitwell sat down together with friends and the workman at Renishaw Hall and decided to turn the derilct Stable comlex in to Musuems and a Cafe. In 1995, the Sitwellian Museum opened to the public for the first time, all the wood and glass display cabinets where made by the workman at Renishaw Hall and these housed exhibits and personal memotoes of the Sitwells through out the ages. Over the next two years the musuem expanded, a art shop was opened as was craft workshops and the Tea room became a Cafe. In 1997 the first ever John Piper exhibition was opened at Renishaw Hall by Johns daughter and this was so such a sucess, the John Piper exhibition has been held here every year. In 1999 the Sitwells opened the Gallery for the Performing Arts, this contains Gowns, Uniforms and personal letters, Pictures of the stars of the silver screen and stage. In 2000 the Gallery for the Performing Arts was extended and The John Piper Art Gallery was moved to a bigger and Brighter room and we added a new venture which was a souvenir and antique shop. In 2001, the Sitwells continued the trend of the family to encourage local and natioanal artists to exhibit at Renishaw Hall AND SEVERAL ARTISTS HAVE HAD EXHIBITIONS . 2003 will soon be here. check out 2003 CALENDER OF EVENTS BY TELEPHONING 01246 432310 The Museum in the Georgian Stables Notes for the NewComer The Stables at Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire, occupy the site of a house that belonged to three successive families, the Wigfalls, Newtowns- related to the great Sir Isaac- and the Simpson and when the last Mr Simpson died in 1795, there nieghbour Mr Sitwell Sitwell, later first Baronet, bought there property that had long co-existed in the middle of his own and called in a alocal architect, known as Joseph Badger of Sheffield.Two years earlier Bbadger had added the Dining Room on to the original Manor Hose built by George Sitwell in 1625, the first of many additions, new buildings and follies in and around the Park. Hhere his instructions were to pull down the Simpsons house and erect a new Stable Block in the claasical style with six turrents, four at the corners and two in the middle of the nothern and southern elevations with a fine Tuscan portico and clock tower above, facing the Hall. By the middle of the this century the racing stud had long gone and the horses supplsanted by Fresian Cows, the property of the Gratton family, tenent farmers who lived in the central turret on the south side. Under the present owners modern farm buildings have been constructed and the farmers re-housed in a custom built bungalow. The future of the Stables, now largely abondened, became a promblem. Thus hence the idea for the Museum, art galleries and Tea Rooms became a reality. Alec Cobb and his assistant designed the layout. the clour schemes and the elaborate display cabinets and the rest is history. Unbelievable Collection This is a collection to see. It is a must. Everthing from Cher to Rolling Stones. The Three Tenors to Sir Henry Irving. Audrey Hepburn to Ceil De Mille. Elizabeth Taylor to Richard Burton. Julia Migenes to Elizabeth Harwood. as well as a section devoted to Marie Callas home start events news articles museums in our city museums in our country address full description opening hours tourism office Renishaw Hall Musuem Renishaw Hall Musuem &Art Gallery Map to find us at Renishaw Hall in the county of Derbyshire Map of area around Renishaw Hall Renishaw Hall Gardens open no title John Piper Art Exhibition at Renishaw Hall Performing Arts Gallery Rolling stones jacket Tour of Renishaw Hall 1995. musuem opens at Renishaw Hall Stablex complex The Museum in the Georgian Stables The Gallery for the Performing Arts Renishaw Hall Racing Colours Renishaw Hall Gardens open Ballon Animals Easter Egg Hunt 2002 Children's Steam Railway Schools and Colleges Senior Citzens welcome at Renishaw Hall Gardens Renishaw Hall Musuem &Art Gallery Groups Welcome Renishaw Hall Wine Renishaw Hall Caf'e Renishaw Hall built in 1625 Bolsover Chesterfield the spire town Eckington Town Tour a reality Renishaw Area New Guide Book Staff at Renishaw Hall Friends of Renishaw Hall Corporate Room for hire Renishaw

Renishaw a architeculural gem or not

Set in garden and Parkland, Renishaw is barely two miles from the motorway M1 and equidistant about 155 miles- between London and the nearist point on the Scottish border. Eastwards lies Sherwood forest with its Thousand lingering memories of Robin Hood and the Ddukeries; to the west the land rises steeply towards the peak National Forest and Park, South wards are the hills and dales of Derbyshire; mixed farming and coal Mining, while only six miles away to the north is the heart of thr great sprawling city of Sheffield- for Renishaw is on the fridges of Hallamshire' that southern corner of the West Riding where Yorkshire ends, where Derbyshire begins and of which Sheffield is the natural centre and Capital. Fro mre information on the Sitwells of Renishaw Hall see the web site on www.sitwell.co.uk or buy the new book.

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  The Twisted Spire

  Check out www.chesterfield.com Check out www.gochesterfield.com

Eckington Town Tour a reality

Town Trail Leaflet

Intersted in taking in the local site around Renishaw Hall and visiting the Norman Church in Eckington, then look no further, because a a new leaflet has been produced by the Eckington Regeneration Commiittee about the historic Township of Eckington. Contact Debbie on 01246 436392 FOR MORE INFORMATION.

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Renishaw Hall Wine

Renishaw Hall Wine

White and Sparkling

Yes thats right. Home grown wine in Derbyshire. Can this be right, well yes it is. Since 1976 Sir Reresby and Lady Sitwell have been growing wine up in the hills of Derbyshire. It was tried in several place within the 5000 acre park, before the ideal place was found in a walled gardens where the farmer once grew potates. It was trial and error at the start and for many years, the estate got only a 100 bottles back, but these days it has increased to 500 white and 100 sparkling and yes it all is sold to a adoring public, who cannot get enough of it, because visitors buy it either in the caseload or buy the bottle. To keep up with demand new rows of vines where planted several years ago and this should increase yeald in 2005.

John Piper Art Exhibition at Renishaw Hall

John Piper Art Exhibition at Renishaw Hall

"A must to see" in 2003

John Piper was born in 1903, bought up and educated at Epsom, then a quiet country town, and the third son of a solicitor, who commuted daily to his office in Westminster. Charles Piper sympathised with his youngest son’s interest in the English countryside and country churches, sketching and talking notes was a likeable hobby but unthinkable as a career. When the eldest was slain at Ypres in 1915 both parents were shattered and the father insisted the two surviving sons should follow in the safe profession of Law: Gordon complies but John obeyed unwillingly: after four years’ drudgery he failed miserably in his exams and his father suddenly died. John abandoned the law, went to art school, fell in love with a fellow student, Eileen Holding, and married her. Lean tears followed, as father predicated: John could not make a living as artist and took to reviewing books, plays, concerts and films. Meanwhile John and Eileen began to drift apart. In 1934 a revolution took place. Ivon Hitchens, a fellow artist ten years his senior, invited John for a long weekend of painting at his seaside cottage near Aldeburgh, Suffolk, in company of Myfanwy Evans. London born of Welsh parents, she had read English at Oxford and was now a journalist and critic of abstract art. She was to become John’s second wife, soul mate, mother of their four children, and famous in her own right as librettist for three of Benjamin Britten’s operas. Next they worked together on “Axis”, a magazine of abstract art and discovered Fawley Bottom Farmhouse and outbuildings, then derelict and without any modern conviences in a remote beechwood valley in the Chilterns but near Henley –on – Thames, so easily accessible to London. This was to be their headquarters, where their children grew up and as an obituary in “The Times” tartly observed, “ they made their homes for the rest of there sternly creative but warmly hospitable lives”. Normally immune to passing fashions, John had fallen for the abstract and started his own career as an abstract artist, which may surprise many who know of him mainly as a topographical painter. Later he declared, “I never had any intention of remaining an abstract artist”, yet he never entirely abandoned the abstract style. In 1936 John Piper started a long association with the “ Architectural Review” and made friends with the assistant editor, John Betjeman with whom who worked on a new project, Shell Guidebooks. Then Betjeman had another brainwave: he persuaded Piper to learn the complicated process of making aquatints and so “Brighton Aquatints” twelve in all, each with a caption by the artist, that wittily illustrated different aspects of the town, was published for Christmas 1939 and did more than anything else to put Piper on the map. My Uncle Osbert Sitwell wrote a rave review in the now defunct BBC weekly magazine “ The Listener” and, at an exhibition held shortly afterwards, bought a little drawing of Brunswick Square, Brighton, the first of seventy or so paintings by Piper that he was to collect. Early in the War Kenneth Clark, art historian, later famous as “Lord Clark of Civilisation” was responsible for setting up the War Artists Scheme and Piper was promptly released from the R.A.F. to paint instant bomb damage and also to record buildings that might in time be blitzed. Some of Piper’s greatest works resulted: the ruins of Coventry Cathedral the “morning after” on 15th November 1940 and amongst potential targets, Windsor Castle. For Kenneth Clark, as surveyor of the Kings Pictures, obtained a commission for Piper to paint twelve of Windsor and the Queen (now Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother) was so delighted that she commissioned Piper to paint a further twelve. In the same year 1942 as painting Windsor and starting here at Renishaw, Piper produced his first work for the theatre, a stage cloth for the revival of “Facade”, “the entertainment” of poems by my aunt Edith, set to music by William Walton. Many other works for the stage followed. In later years Piper visited and revisited many of his “Favourite Places” such as Romney Marsh, the Isle of Portland and above all Snowdonia, as well as other parts of middle and south Wales, Cornwall and other areas in the “Celtic Fridge, Painting countless country houses, cathedrals, churches, chapels and humble ruined cottages, and included amongst his travels many working trips to France and Italy. Besides stage settings and costumes his versality encompassed designs for stained glass, mosaics, tapestries and pottery, even curtains and chair covers; he was also a talented photographer, poet and pianist.