Biggar & Upper Clydesdale Museum

Located on the south side of the High Street in Biggar, South Lanarkshire, Biggar & Upper Clydesdale Museum was opened on 16th October 2015 by HRH The Princess Royal to replace three smaller museums; namely the Gladstone Court Museum, Greenhill Covenanters' House and the Moat Park Heritage Centre. This museum was a major community project pursued by the volunteers of Biggar Museum Trust, which has resulted in a fine local museum being built on the site of a derelict garage. Costing £2.2 million, the museum explores natural and cultural history, focusing on the people who have lived and worked in this area from prehistoric times up to the mid-20th century. Displays cover the archaeology, geography and history of the area, with features on Neolithic, Bronze and Iron-Age peoples, the Covenanters, Crimean heroes and the Polish soldiers billeted in Biggar during World War II. The most prominent display is a reconstructed street improved from the original Gladstone Court Museum. This including grocer, bootmaker, dressmaker, ironmonger and toy-shop, together with a bank, printer and a working telephone exchange, each from a period dates between Victorian times and the 1950s. In addition to the museum galleries and an area for temporary exhibitions, the building houses an archive room, stores and a small retail outlet.

Gladstone Court Museum began as a private collection in 1964 but was made available to the public in 1968 when it was formally opened by local poet Hugh MacDiarmid (1892 -1978). The Moat Park Heritage Centre had been the flagship of Biggar Museum Trust and was opened by HRH The Princess Royal in 1988. Its focus had been natural history and archaeology, describing the formation of the Clyde and Tweed valleys alongside the plants, animals and people who occupied this landscape, textiles and fine art.


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