Milton Keynes Museum
Encyclopedia
Local museum
A local museum is a museum that covers local history. Its collection normally includes objects with a local connection of some sort. Such museums are often small in nature and have a low budget for their running costs...
in the parish of Wolverton and Greenleys
Wolverton and Greenleys
Wolverton and Greenleys is a civil parish with a Town Council in the borough of Milton Keynes, England. It is north-west of central Milton Keynes, and according to the 2001 census had a population of 8,253...
in Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes , sometimes abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, in the south east of England, about north-west of London. It is the administrative centre of the Borough of Milton Keynes...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. It is mostly run by volunteers with a small number of paid staff.
The museum is housed in a former Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
farmstead.
It covers the history of the Milton Keynes area, including northern Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
and southern Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with the ceremonial counties of Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east,...
, from the year 1800 onwards. It includes the Stacey Hill Collection of rural life, consisting of agricultural, domestic, industrial, and social objects connected to the area before the 1967 foundation of Milton Keynes.
There is also a collection of many memorabilia of the nearby Wolverton railway works
Wolverton railway works
Wolverton railway works was established in Wolverton, Buckinghamshire, by the London and Birmingham Railway Company in 1838 at the midpoint of the 112 mile-long route from London to Birmingham...
.
The museum's Connected Earth collection includes a variety of historic telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
s and switchboard
Switchboard
The term switchboard, when used by itself, may refer to:*Telephone switchboard*Electric switchboard*Printed circuit board*Mixing console*In computing, Switch board...
s, many still in working order.
The museum also has some historic Post Office
Post office
A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...
and British Telecom vehicles. The largest of these is the Road Phone, an enormous working telephone used for promotional purposes.
The museum was previously called the Stacey Hill Museum.