Towneley from A to Z
Towneley from A to Z
Store rooms are all the rooms at Towneley that are not used for museum display. Some are used only to store the museum's collection, some only for housekeeping and some, while not generally open to vistors, may be viewed by visitors as part of a guided tour. For security reasons, this A to Z topic entry aims only to give a general description showing that the storage space is scattered across a number of rooms, not all of which are entirely suitable for the preservation of the museum's permanent collections.
The building of the New Wing in 2002 freed up some rooms in the main building and much of the archives and social history collections are now in the new wing. The Textile Store in the Long Gallery is the only collections store room in the South wing. On the first floor of the North wing, the old general office and library became the Large Oil Store and the Ceramics Store . An Inventory of 1871 shows these two rooms were Colonel Towneley's bedroom and dressing room.
When the Stocks Massey Gallery was created in 1923, part of the room above the Chapel (room 51 in the 1902 Heating Plan) was walled off to create storage space. Today the lower part is used for housekeeping while the upper part, Store Over Chapel , is used for some of the decorative art collections. Another small space was created off the Stocks Massey Gallery, out of what had been a doorway into room 52 in the 1902 Heating Plan and this Store Between Galleries is still used for oil paintings that are rarely displayed.
Two other rooms on the second floor of the North wing never used for museum display are a Lady's Maids Bedroom in the Victorian Tower, now the Top Oil Store and the Butler's Bedroom in the North Tower, now the Watercolour Store .
The Roof Area has long provided storage space and is still used for part of the furniture collection. The Cellars were also used for storage below the South wing as late as 2010 but it is very damp and can be flooded after long periods of heavy rain. The Wine Cellar is some what drier and is still used to store plaster casts.