The Museum is now closed and will re-open on Wednesday 10th March 2010.With a new exhibition!The 'Sights and Sounds' exhibition will be a vibrant little exhibition, packed with past sights and sounds of the town and surrounding area. There will be film, photos, sound archives and curios to engage the history detective within you!For those of you who have already visited the Lethbridge exhibition, you will find some additional artifacts to view.The Museum is always changing! | Faces from Newton Abbot's past |
 View from Baker's Hill late 1840's |
Following the very successful exhibition in 2009, of the 250th anniversary of the extraordinary life of Newtonian, John Lethbridge. It has been decided to keep the exhibition for 2010, with a few exciting additions, for those that feel they have seen it all - there is more to see!
In addition to the John Lethbridge exhibition, the museum will be focusing, in 2010, on the ‘Sights and Sounds’ of Newton Abbot through the centuries. There will be a chance for visitors to view, for the first time, a selection of the museum film archive, and hear extracts from the museum oral archive collections. These include recordings of railway drivers, and firemen from the steam age, as well as many images of the town.Visitors will be able to ‘have a go’ on the working signal box, in the Great Western Railway Room, and talk with enthusiastic volunteers. By the time visitors leave the museum, they will be able to understand the principles of I.K. Brunel’s atmospheric railway. It was built between Exeter and Newton Abbot, and was destined to be built further down the line. It failed after only 18 months; it was a brave and pioneering system with no need for locomotives. The museum has a model and a section of the original atmospheric pipe. |
The JOHN LETHBRIDGE 250 Exhibition - was opened on the 10th March by International diver and Marine Archaeologist, Robert Stenuit and the Mayor of Newton Abbot, Councillor Corney-Walker.
John Lethbridge invented a diving machine, testing it in his garden in Newton Abbot, at the very hour of the eclipse in 1715! He went on to work as a salvage man-'wrackman' for the Dutch East India Company, and is known all over the world. This year is his 250th anniversary, and the museum is honouring him in style.
 Robert Stenuit (Director of the Groupe de Recherche Archeologique Sous-Marine post medieval of Brussels) kindly agreed to open the exhibition because of his great admiration for the skills and courage of John Lethbridge. Stenuit knows more than most how Lethbridge worked, as in 1977, he dived in a full-sized replica of Lethbridge's 'diving-engine' in a testing tank. Stenuit followed in Lethbridge's footsteps, diving on the 'Slot ter Hooge' a shipwrecked East India man, and was filmed by the BBC. The artefacts left behind by Lethbridge during his salvage attempt in 1724 have been loaned to the museum by Stenuit for the exhibition. The BBC filmed in the museum and Newton Abbot,to illustrate the amazing adventures of John Lethbridge who lived in Newton Abbot during the 1700s.  Robert Stenuit travelled to Newton Abbot to share his enthusiasm and great knowledge on John Lethbridge. He is pictured (above) with Marc Horton, marine archaeologist and BBC presenter in the workshop of Nick Hunt, who, together with his son have made the full-sized replica for the exhibition. Pictured left are local community actors ready to perform in a short re-enactment of Lethbridge's first experiment. The 'Inside Out' programme on the exploits of John Lethbridge was screened the week before the exhibition opened. | Robert Stenuit pictured (right) with past Mayor Cllr. David Corney-Walker on the official opening of the museum exhibition on 9th March 2009. |  |
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