Museums
A number of commercial museums were set up in the Lake District during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This development was concurrent with the rise in the popularity of the Lake District as a destination for tourists. Visitors to the area would have required an interesting diversion when weather limited their trips on the mountains and lakes; a museum of the curious and exotic could provide this.
Some of the museums founded during this period included the Crosthwaite
and Hutton Museums in Keswick, the Todhunter Museum in Hawkshead
and the Wallace museum in Whitehaven. They included local fossils
and minerals, taxidermy, important historical objects and exhibits
of artefacts from around the world.
The museum business proved a competitive one, particularly in the case of Peter Crosthwaite and Thomas Hutton whose rivalry became almost as famous within the town of Keswick as their museums! It was certainly well-known enough for William Hutchinson to pick up on and report in his History of Cumberland (1794) declaring that the division of interesting articles between the two businesses was “a great disappointment to the traveller”.
Peter Crosthwaite’s house and museum in The Square, Keswick. From Peter Brears, Commercial Museums of Eighteenth Century Cumbria: The Crosthwaite, Hutton and Todhunter collections.