Mining Landscapes is a UK-based initiative dedicated to uncovering and celebrating the rich heritage of former coal mining regions. By developing walking and cycling routes, the organization enables communities to engage with and commemorate their industrial past. These routes are designed in collaboration with local residents, fostering a deep connection to the landscape and its history. 

For building conservation professionals, Mining Landscapes offers valuable insights into the historical significance of mining-related structures and sites. The project emphasizes the preservation of surviving features within mining landscapes, providing detailed information on their historical context and current state. This resource aids professionals in making informed decisions regarding conservation efforts. 

Homeowners residing in former mining areas can benefit from the project's comprehensive documentation of local history. By exploring the walking and cycling routes, residents gain a deeper appreciation of their surroundings and the historical events that shaped them. This connection to the past can enhance community pride and inform property stewardship. 

Enthusiasts of industrial heritage will find Mining Landscapes to be a treasure trove of information and experiences. The project's virtual museum offers a wealth of resources, including historic maps, plans, images, sound and video clips, songs, and poetry, all accessible through an interactive app. This multimedia approach brings history to life, allowing users to immerse themselves in the stories of coal mining communities. 

Mining Landscapes actively encourages public participation. Users are invited to contribute their own stories and memories to existing routes or suggest and create new journeys. This collaborative approach ensures that the project remains dynamic and reflective of the communities it represents, continually enriching the collective understanding of the UK's mining heritage.  

Organisation Statement:

"It is not so long ago that coal had a place in everyday life in Central Scotland. At its peak in the post-war period, the industry employed around 140,000 workers and met roughly 90% of the Nation’s demand for fuel. Woodmuir Colliery, Breich, West Lothian The local landscape of the colliery towns and villages were dominated by the bing, the headstock, colliery buildings, the railway sidings and the associated housing, clubs and bowling greens. Rapid decline from the 1960s brought closure, demolition and subsequent repurposing and/or redevelopment of the colliery sites that erased much of the industrial archaeology of one of Scotland’s foremost industries.

Although often hard to discern, visible traces of coal mining remain in the landscape today, ranging from sunken hollows, patches of colliery waste and piles of building rubble through to communication networks, reclaimed bings and repurposed buildings. Many sites simply remain as semi-derelict landscapes, lingering on the edge of settlements and largely unmanaged, but they are still spaces people engage with daily, where memories of past industry may linger, and powerful legacies can still be imagined and brought to mind such as profound sense of loss and social trauma, particuarly in relation to loss of life or where pit closure was brutal. Yet they also provide a sense of historical and community continuity, an anchor point for identity, and links to the past that helps to understand the present.

Project Aims:

• To provide a sustainable and dynamic record of the disappearing landscape features and industrial archaeology of former colliery sites as seen through the eyes of the local communities.
• To record and interpret local mining landscapes and link former colliery sites more strongly to local memory and knowledge. - To tell the story of deindustrialisation and coal in a much more nuanced and affirmative manner that challenges and reshapes the often-negative perceptions of the ‘pit village’.
• To provide ‘visibility and voice’ by highlighting the cultural, environmental and ecological values of the former mining landscapes and the subsequent role these sites have in green energy transitions and carbon capture.

The initiative offers a sustainable method of community co-production that provides a new medium for individuals and community groups to express issues around their heritage, a novel method of heritage recording and preservation, and the creation of artistic artefacts."

Sir John Soane’s Museum is the extraordinary house and museum of the British architect Sir John Soane (1753-1837). On this page, discover the history of the Museum, its founder and its world class collections.

Sir John Soane was one of the foremost architects of the Regency era, a Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy, and a dedicated collector of paintings, sculpture, architectural fragments and models, books, drawings and furniture.

Born in 1753, the fourth son of a bricklayer, his father’s professional links with architects and his own natural talent for drawing won him the opportunity to train as an architect. A talented and hard-working student, Soane was awarded the Royal Academy’s prestigious Gold Medal for Architecture, as a result receiving a bursary (funded by King George III) to undertake a Grand Tour of Europe. His travels to the ruins of Ancient Rome, Paestum and Pompeii would inspire his lifelong interest in Classical art and architecture.

Soane’s inventive use of light, space and his experimentation with the forms of Classical architecture earned him great success as an architect. During his career he won numerous high-profile projects, including the Bank of England (where he was architect for 45 years) and Dulwich Picture Gallery, and created his own extraordinary home and Museum on Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

His successes as an architect and his fascination with the history of architecture let to his appointment as Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy in 1806. Already an enthusiastic collector, he began to repurpose his home at Lincoln’s Inn Fields as a Museum for students of architecture.
The buildings

Today, Sir John Soane’s Museum occupies three buildings, Nos 12, 13, and 14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Sir John Soane acquired and rebuilt each of these buildings during his lifetime.

In 1792, Soane bought No. 12, at that time a 17th century house which he demolished and rebuilt as his home and office. Close to the Bank of England, of which he was Architect, the Royal Academy (then at Somerset House) and the coaching inns on High Holborn, the property was a convenient location for Soane as both a home and an office. In 1807, now Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy, Soane bought and moved into No. 13, the house next door, creating a larger architectural office and what is today the Dome Area, which he filled with his rapidly expanding collections, and renting out the front of No. 12. In late 1823, he acquired No. 14, which he demolished and rebuilt in 1824-25, designing a new Picture Room as an extension to No. 13 to house his expanding collection of paintings.
The Museum

With a collection containing thousands of objects ranging from Ancient Egyptian antiquities and Roman sculpture to models of contemporary buildings, Soane’s house had become a Museum by the time of his death. He acquired some spectacular items, including the sarcophagus of the Egyptian pharaoh, Seti I.

The organisation of the Museum can at first glance seem crowded and even chaotic. However, it is, in fact, purposeful, with each interior being a work of art in its own right. Soane was constantly arranging and rearranging the collection, not just to incorporate new acquisitions, but to enhance the objects’ poetic qualities through creative and inspiring juxtapositions. In the Model Room, for example, Soane placed models of his own works beneath models of the ancient ruins that inspired them.

In 1833, Soane negotiated a private Act of Parliament: to preserve his house and collection, exactly as it was arranged at the time of his death, in perpetuity – and to keep it open and free for inspiration and education. Upon his death in January 1837, a Board of Trustees took on the responsibility of upholding Soane’s wishes – as they continue to do today.

Today, this unique house attracts more than 100,000 visitors a year. We hope that they enter curious and leave inspired – as our Founder intended

The Stained Glass Museum offers a unique insight into the fascinating history of stained glass, an art-form that has been practised in Britain for at least thirteen hundred years.

Our permanent gallery displays over 125 stained glass panels representing eight hundred years of the history of this ancient art, from the thirteenth century to the present day.

All the stained glass panels in the gallery are displayed at eye-level enabling visitors to have a rare close-encounter with the art of stained glass. Temporary exhibitions are also held throughout the year, highlighting panels and designs from the Museum's reserve collection.

The National Stone Centre offers courses in dry stone walling and stone carving. It also offers a stone sourcing and matching service for the industry and its library (accessible by prior appointment) covers geology, the minerals industry, minerals planning and a school resources section.

Formerly known as the Geffrye Museum, the Home Museum's permanent display of period rooms shows the changing style of English middle-class living rooms from 1600 to the present day.

Our research, programming and partnerships - We are a place to explore and debate what home means. We do this by creating exhibitions, events, collaborations, research and debates that shine a light on important issues and fulfil our mission to reveal and rethink ideas on home.

Collaborative research - We work with partners throughout the world and have collaborations across the UK to support ground-breaking research into the meaning of home, past, present and future.

MoDA is part of Middlesex University and an accessible research collection welcoming anyone by appointment. MoDA's collections provide an insight into domestic design and home life in Britain and are very helpful for generating ideas, getting inspired, and for research.

The Museum of Bath Architecture is housed in the Countess of Huntingdon’s Chapel, built in 1765 for Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon. The use of Gothic revival motifs in the chapel reflected a preference for an alternative to the ancient Greek and Roman classicism that pervaded architecture during the early-to-mid-eighteenth century. When it was finished, Lady Huntingdon’s Chapel was the only consequential post-medieval Gothic in Bath, since most new architecture of the eighteenth century of that style was reserved for sham castles or follies tucked in the gardens of large country estates.

Manx National Heritage (Manx: Eiraght Ashoonagh Vannin) is the national heritage organisation for the Isle of Man. The organisation manages a significant proportion of the island’s physical heritage assets including over 3,000 acres of coastline and landscape. It holds property, archives, artwork, library and museum collections in trust for the Manx nation. It is the Isle of Man's statutory heritage agency and an Isle of Man registered charity (№ 603).

Manx National Heritage is responsible for protecting and promoting the Isle of Man’s natural and cultural heritage. We are an Isle of Man registered charity and look after some of the Island’s most special places, spaces, archives and museum collections, making these available to people across the world.

The Engine Shed is Scotland’s dedicated building conservation centre, based in Stirling. Part of Historic Environment Scotland, it serves as a central hub for building and conservation professionals and the general public.

Our historic built environment is a finite and unique resource, yet its care calls for conservation skills that are in short supply. This learning and visitor resource is helping to encourage a greater understanding of traditional building materials and skills – and inspire future generations to continue to care for Scotland’s built heritage.

The Engine Shed building - It’s fitting that the home of Scotland’s first dedicated building conservation centre itself uses traditional materials in a contemporary way.

The Engine Shed building, used as a goods transfer shed, was built sometime between 1896 and 1913. The exact details of its construction were subject to an information blackout, and are still unknown, as it was part of an important military complex. The strategic base on the banks of the River Forth was a key resource for the army in the run up to and during both World Wars.

A programme of restoration and development, which began in 2013 and concluded in 2017, revitalised and extended the original building. The Engine Shed, part of Historic Environment Scotland, is a transformative learning and tourism resource for Stirling – and Scotland.
About the structure

The Engine Shed is a single storey building with sandstone walls and a slate roof, with a glazed clerestory window that runs the full length of the building. Steel roof trusses that span the width of the building support the roof.

Inside the historic building is a single large space, into which the lecture theatre for the building conservation centre has been installed as a pod – similar to the way in which large railway stations house shops and cafés. Originally the train track entered the shed, and elevated platforms ran along one or both sides. As part of the restoration, the floor has been taken down to the original level and the rails and platforms removed.

The Bailiwick of Guernsey is a British Crown Dependency located in the Channel Islands and includes the islands of Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Herm and Jethou. We care for the core collections relating to archaeology, art, natural history and social history as part of the States of Guernsey.

Our Museums

We are a member of the Museums Association and Accredited under the UK scheme administered by Arts Council England that sets nationally agreed standards for museums.

Our accredited museums are:

Guernsey Museum & Art Gallery
Fort Grey Shipwreck Museum
German Naval Signals Headquarters
Castle Cornet & its five museums.

PERMANENTLY CLOSED: Guernsey Telephone Museum (2011)

Other museums which operate in Guernsey do not fall under our responsibility.

Objects not on display are kept in our reserve collection stores, which may be visited by prior arrangement. We also manage and maintain 80 historic sites and have responsibility for field archaeology.

Alderney and Sark - Alderney Museum is also accredited under the MLA scheme but is separately funded and administered by the Alderney Society.

In Sark, La Societe Serquaise mount a changing display at their Heritage Rooms.


Partnerships & Sponsorship Opportunities

In Guernsey and indeed throughout the world, partnership with the private sector plays an important role in supporting and enhancing the work of museums and art galleries.

We have responsibility for 3 castles, 8 museums, 80 historic sites and the finds from over 2,500 archaeological sites, including those of international importance. The collections include over 50,000 items including some 2,500 pieces of fine art and our exhibits come from many parts of the world as well as from our home.

We are the major repository of the islands' culture and the guardian preserving it for the future.

A partner has the opportunity to make a major contribution towards the objectives of the Museum, for example by supporting:

Exhibitions at Guernsey Museum & Art Gallery
Public Events at Castle Cornet or our other sites
Conservation projects to preserving the island's heritage
Educational initiatives to help the island's youth
Publications to share our work with the wider world
Enhancements of our sites to increase public enjoyment and understanding

Partners can become intimately involved in planning and design work as well as enjoying a corporate presence in leaflets, posters and adverts. We have a high profile in the islands and rarely a week passes without our initiatives appearing in the local media and some in the national press. There will be photo opportunities, media coverage and the option for staff and clients to attend special events.

The Head of Heritage Services maintains an up-to-date schedule of projects which would benefit from sponsorships or partnership with the private sector.

We are always pleased to discuss any potential projects - contact us for more information.

The museum was set up in 1977 in order to rescue from demolition the abandoned ancient church of St Mary's which is the burial place of John Tradescant, the first great gardener and plant-hunter in British history. His tomb is the centrepiece of a knot garden planted with the flowers which grew in his London garden four centuries ago.

In 2008 the interior was transformed into a centre for exhibitions and events by the construction of contemporary gallery spaces. Three exhibitions each year explore the making of British gardens, and a programme of over 30 talks and interviews celebrates heroes and heroines from the forgotten plant-hunters and gardeners of the past to the designers and writers in fashion today.

The Garden Museum is next door to Lambeth Palace, sitting on the bank of the Thames looking across to Parliament. We are a ten minute walk from Vauxhall, Westminster and Lambeth North stations.

All visitors, including Friends of the Garden Museum, must book a ticket online ahead of your visit. Before you visit please read our Visitors’ Charter and Q&As for the measures we’ve put in place to ensure your visit to the Museum is safe and enjoyable.

Chiltern Open Air Museum in Buckinghamshire was founded by volunteers in 1976, and opened to the public in 1981. The Museum is a charity that rescues threatened historic buildings, which would otherwise be demolished, and rebuilds and preserves them in a traditional Chilterns landscape.

The Museum now has 37 rescued historic buildings that were the workplaces or homes of ordinary people. Every building on site was once somewhere else and either lived in or used by our Chilterns ancestors. By bringing the buildings together at the museum we have built a timeline that helps to tell the story of the Chilterns – a special landscape of rolling chalk hills, traditional crafts and time-honoured ways of life that continue to inspire today.

The Museum also has a working historic farm with livestock that includes sheep, goats, cows and chickens. There are a number of small gardens, cherry orchard and Dig for Victory allotment.

Traditional Chilterns skills and living history are demonstrated through an extensive events and award winning school education program.

The Museum is a popular filming venue and has been used for filming Midsomer Murders, Downton Abbey, Mary Queen of Scots, Grantchester, Horrible Histories and lots more.

The Museum is a charity and receives no government funding. All operating costs are funded via admission charges, Annual Pass sales, private hire, filming, school visits, tea room and catering sales and donations. The Museum is run by a small team of staff and an amazing team of volunteers, fueled by cake and a passion for the Museum and its work.
Further information

The museum has a well-established reputation as a provider of specialist training in historic building conservation. The 50 historic buildings reconstructed on the site give the museum an unrivalled teaching resource in this specialised field.

Courses for surveyors, architects, conservation officers and craftspeople are eligible for CPD certificates. MSc programmes in Building Conservation and Timber Building Conservation are validated by the University of York.

The exciting and innovative Downland Gridshell building provides workshop space and artefact storage. Research library designed for professional use.

The Museum is spread over 19 acres of beautiful Worcestershire countryside and includes a wildflower meadow, period gardens, a traditional cider and perry orchard as well as the collection of historic buildings.

In 1967 Avoncroft Museum was opened to the public following the rescue and reconstruction of a medieval merchant’s house from Bromsgrove, and soon became England’s first open-air museum. Then, as now, our priority was to retain historic buildings in their original location. Over five decades, Avoncroft Museum has continued to rescue structures where this had not been achievable and the museum now displays and cares for over twenty five historic buildings that range in date from Worcester Cathedral’s fourteenth century Guesten Hall roof to a post second world war prefab from Birmingham, covering over 700 years of Midlands history.

Visitors will be able to enjoy the peaceful countryside as well as explore the historic buildings, enjoy the Edwardian Tea Room and discover the past.

Few people today think of the south-east of England as the home of heavy industry and yet, not so long ago, the beautiful South Downs provided a natural abundance of materials from pits, mines and quarries. Valuable minerals such as fuller’s earth, sand, gravel, clay and chalk, all vital to the construction industry, were in plentiful supply. The site now occupied by the Museum was formerly the Amberley chalk pits and it is these quarries, kilns and associated buildings that form the backdrop to the Amberley story of industry and rural crafts that have shaped this part of Sussex.

From the 1840s to the 1960s, chalk was quarried and burnt in the kilns at Amberley to make lime for mortar, decorating and agricultural use. In 1876 John Pepper and his son, Thomas Cunningham Pepper, took over from several small producers in the area and by the turn of the century, they were the only producers on the site, which was ideally located to take advantage of road, railway and river transport. Over the years, Pepper and Son Ltd diversified into the manufacture and distribution of a variety of building materials and had depots in a number of Sussex towns until the closure of the business in the 1960s.



Amberley Museum arose from a concept created in the 1970s by a group of architects, surveyors, planners and museum professionals who felt there was a need for a centre in the south-east where industrial and social history could be conserved and interpreted in an active working environment. The site at Amberley came to their attention as a Victorian period time capsule of original buildings, kilns of various ages and a settlement that had been created by its industrial and transport facilities, a rarity in the south. The County Council was persuaded to buy the site at auction to ‘protect the local environment and landscape of the Sussex Downs’ and to stop inappropriate development. A Trust to promote the concept was formed in 1974 and became the Southern Industrial History Centre. By the spring of 1979, the site had been tidied, planning permission and a lease for 99 years secured and Amberley Museum opened to the public! Admission was 50p, there was precious little to see and there wasn’t even a tea room!

The 1980s saw some major acquisitions by the museum. These included a radio, television and telephone collection together with a 1930s automatic telephone exchange, which is still in operation today. Another major boost to the collection was the most complete operational interwar bus fleet to be preserved in the UK from the local Southdown company. This not only included vehicles but complete garages and workshop equipment and arrived in 1987.

Although a railway was not in the original plans, a notable collection of industrial railway equipment at Brockham found itself unable to continue on its existing site. Many items came from the south-east – from brickyards, sand quarries, chalk pits or factories. The railway was constructed from 1982-4 and Amberley now has one of the leading industrial narrow-gauge railways in the UK.

In the 1990s Amberley was becoming recognised as a major open-air museum and was approached by three major donors – the South Eastern Electricity Board who wished to rehouse their museum collection (including the curator); British Telecom who were diversifying their museum to regional locations and the Paviors Company who wished to sponsor a Museum of Roads. These became the Milne Electrical Collection, the BT Connected Earth display and the Paviors Museum of Roads and Roadmaking.

The Limeburners Café was constructed in 2002-4 and the previous home of the café in the Base became available for the ever-growing learning programme at the museum. A further grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund resulted in the building of the Railway Exhibition Hall in 2004 and a further grant from NLHF enabled the consolidation of the de Witt limekilns, together with an exhibition called Life & Lime, which was opened in 2011.

In 2014, the West Sussex Wood Turners building was completed, allowing for more woodturning demonstrations and activity days for our visitors. 2015 saw the development of the Tools and Trades History Society’s workshop to include a Saw Doctor’s Workshop display. In 2016 the Bag Mender’s workshop (part of the original chalk pit buildings and a Scheduled Monument) was repaired, with a grant from Historic England, with additional funds from the Friends of the Museum.

In 2017, the Museum opened the Billingshurst signal box, which had been removed from its original site prior to the widening of an adjacent level crossing, brought to the Museum and re-built, retaining many of its original features including the 1876 lever frame.

A new engine shed “Burt’s Bunk” was opened in 2017, on the Standard Gauge tracks leading to the De Witt Kilns, to house our diesel locomotive, “Burt” (which is similar to the engine that worked at the chalk pits in the 1950s). In 2018/9 the Loco Shed and Smithy (again original chalk pit buildings and Scheduled Monuments) were repaired using a grant from Historic England, with additional funding from The Garfield Weston Foundation, The Coral Samuel Trust and The Friends of the Museum.