History Of Dorman Museum
The first thoughts about a town museum began as early as the 1860’s when the Middlesbrough Athenaeum, formed in 1863 as a society for the ‘cultivation of literature, science and the arts,’ began to collect items of interest to its members.
1881 saw the creation of the Cleveland Naturalist’s Field Club as an offshoot of the Literary and Philosophical Society (as the Athenaeum was now called). Its members, keen to establish a natural history museum, persuaded Middlesbrough Council’s Library Committee to form an official museum sub-committee.
In 1884 the Club and Society handed over control of their collections to the Council. Dr. William Young Veitch, lifelong advocate of the museum movement, produced the first catalogue of the holdings.
In 1888 the collections were moved to the new Town Hall Municipal Buildings, but it was not until 16th March 1890 that they went on public display.
Four hundred people visited the museum within the Town Hall on its first day and many of them brought specimens to donate. The museum proved to be such a runaway success that an extra two rooms had to be handed over for its use.
It became obvious that there was the need for a specially built museum. This became even more urgent in 1901 when Sir Alfred Pease offered to donate his large personal collection of African and Indian animals and birds to the town. He would also pay to have them set up and cased ready for public display.
Sir Arthur Dorman responded to this generous gift by offering to present to the town a natural history museum large enough to house this collection as well as the exhibits on display in the Town Hall.
The museum would serve as a memorial to his son, George Lockwood Dorman, and his comrades, who had recently died in the Boer War.
Designed by local architects J. Mitchell Bottomley, Son and Welford, the Dorman Memorial Museum was built of red brick and terracotta with an ornamental copper-domed tower which soon became one of Middlesbrough’s landmarks. The museum was officially opened on 4 July 1904 by Colonel Hoole C.M.G., the Colonel in Chief of the Yorkshire Regiment.
During the next few decades, the museum continued to acquire objects at a rapid rate, including in 1918 the T.H. Nelson bequest of mounted birds and eggs. The museum, built with no storage facilities other than gallery cabinets, was beginning to run out of space.
When the Dorman Museum received its extension in 1960 the museum displays were updated removing many of the fixed natural history exhibits to make a new local history gallery, displays have continued to reflect the local story of the area with new additions of Linthorpe Art Pottery and Christopher Dresser being enhanced in the more recent years.
Development of the museum
In its early days Dorman Museum provided a glimpse of other cultures and lands before the advent of television or mass travel. Later its collections turned inward looking to record the great social and industrial changes taking place in and around the town.
It was the first purpose built museum in the region and the imposing copper dome and terracotta detailing was there to impress visitors.
The original layout of the museum was typical of the early 20th century carrying forward the Victorian ideal of systematic displays of material. The four main galleries were mostly natural history specimens with some ethnography.
In the 1960’s an extension was added the museum to provide a children’s gallery and storage for the social history collections that had been growing at a steady pace.
In was not until the 1960s that the Dorman Museum finally received its much-needed extension. A children’s gallery was opened on the park side and a large store, conservation lab and design studios were built to the rear.
In 1994 the full height galleries were split to create a new floor with a connecting bridge across the Nelson Gallery.
The most recent series of developments, begun in 2000, the museum received support from the Heritage Lottery Fund to build a new extension that resulted in many more galleries, environmentally controlled collection storage and greatly expanded learning facilities in keeping with its role in the 21st century.