Lancaster City Museums

The City Museum was established in 1923 in the then-empty Georgian Town Hall. In 1985 the Maritime Museum opened in the town’s former Custom House, originally designed in 1764 by Richard Gillow of Waring & Gillow fame. The collection is housed in both sites. Like most civic collections, it owes much to the patronage and munificence of local industrialists. In 1887, on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, Sir Thomas Storey, (1825-1898) rebuilt Lancaster’s Mechanics Institute. It was renamed the Storey Institute and opened in 1891, greatly enlarged, with a Science and Technology School, an art gallery, library and art school. Thomas Storey and his descendants are significant patrons and collectors of art, donating works purchased at the Royal Academy in London and directly from artists. They supported many local artists and students from Lancashire.

The landscape painter, William Hoggatt, benefited from a Storey bursary allowing him to continue his studies in Paris from 1901–03 before finally settling on the Isle of Man. Samuel John Lamorna Birch came from Liverpool to work in Lancaster and exhibited paintings at the Storey Institute before leaving to study in Paris in 1895. He became a respected artist in the Cornwall community and his paintings are today highly prized. In the 1960's the Storey Institute became part of Preston Polytechnic and the collection was then transferred to the City Museum. The collection contains genre paintings by Richard Ansdell, Kate and her husband artist Philip Thomson Gilchrist. The collection was enhanced by the keenness and commitment of Edith Tyson, who was appointed Curator of the City Museum in 1965 a post she held until 1983. She added fine examples of modern and contemporary artists. These included works by Sheila Fell, Norman Adams, Ivon Hitchens and Claude Harrison. Tyson also acquired several works by contemporary naïve painters, former local worker Albert Bond, paintings by Frances Bond and paintings by Jerzy Marek (aka George Murray).