Restoration of the Long Shop

The Museum is about to embark on the exciting adventure of restoring and developing the Long Shop - helping us to become an attraction of national significance.

Significance of the Long Shop

The Long Shop is the Museum's most significant building. Listed grade II* it is amongst the top 5.5% of listed buildings in the country. It is the first purpose built flow line assembly hall for portable steam engines in the world. It was built in 1852 following the success of the Garrett's stand at the 1851 Great Exhibition. The building's scale and proportions led workers to affectionately name it 'The Cathedral' and is today considered to be one of the most important industrial heritage buildings in the country. Original features such as the gantry crane, wooden floor blocks intended to cushion falling cast iron parts and the remains of drive shafts in the walls surrounded by oil staining make it easy to understand this space and imagine it in use. In the centre of the gallery is a large floor light-well, this together with the huge arched Victorian windows throw lots of light into this building - creating a wonderful atmosphere and a superb space for visitors.

What do we plan to do?

Restoration and Increased Access - The Long Shop is in need of significant repairs and restoration work. Large parts of the roof are failing and much of the historic brickwork needs replacing, windows are rotting, the walls are suffering from damp and much of the internal timber work is in need of replacement. The Long Shop is the corner stone of this museum, a building of national importance, representing both the history of Garretts and of the town. We will fully restore this important piece of industrial heritage, protecting it for future generations. We will also improve access - creating level access into the building and installing a lift that will for the first time give everyone equal access to this important space.

Displays Relevant for the 21st Century - The Long Shop's existing displays are in need of updating. We will create professionally designed displays that will for the first time interpret this building for visitors. We will create displays relevant for the 21st century, covering themes of current public interest such as fuel and power production, green issues and sustainable communities. the displays will focus more on human stories connected to themes and collections and will prompt people to engage with them emotionally.

Education and Participation - Throughout this project we will create opportunities for people to get involved, giving them the chance not only to discover their heritage, make decisions about and take ownership of their heritage, but the chance to learn new skills from it. Skills related to restoring historic buildings, related to interpreting an object, even skills related to teaching others. This will include creating worthwhile opportunities for vulnerable, disadvantaged and young people - giving everyone equal access to their heritage and at the same time developing new audiences and involving the museum more closely with the community. This project also holds the opportunity to link to science related themes and create a key stage related education programme around this. As part of this we will create a new short term post that will allow us to create a sustainable education programme that will ensure the museum becomes a valuable asset to schools, youth groups and under fives organisations.

You can find out more about this project and how it helps the Museum to achieve it vision by downloading our Vision Document: click here to download.

If you have any questions about our development work, or you would like to find out how you can get involved and support our work, you can contact us by clicking here.

The Long Shop Museum has undertaken lots of exciting projects in the past, you can find out more about them by clicking here.