About the Museum
The unusual combination of a nursery/garden centre and steam museum on the same site caters for those interested in gardening and/or industrial heritage.
The steam museum has on display some fine examples of stationary steam engines, marine steam engines and steam pumps, some of which are in motion on open days.
The museum is privately owned and receives no external funding. Entrance is entirely free, with running and maintenance costs being met by donations from the visiting public.
It is run almost entirely by volunteers, who restore, run and maintain the engines.
Brief history
The Nursery was established around 40 years ago. Then in the mid 1990s the owner, Tom Nuttall, erected a large building on the site to house his early collection of steam engines. In later years the collection has gradually grown to its present size.
The early collection included:
- A pair of single cylinder horizontal engines, built by Thornewill & Warham in 1884
- A tandem compound mill engine, ‘Agnes’, built by Pollit & Wigzell in 1909
- A twin single cylinder engine, built by Robey & Co. in 1902
2002 was the ‘Year of the Marine Engines’, when four marine engines arrived from the National Maritime Museum (three of these are on loan). Since then, other engines and steam pumps have been added to the collection.
In 2006 the building was extended. This enabled us to acquire a large beam engine (18 ft beam; 16 ft diameter flywheel), built in 1878 by Goddard & Massey, Nottingham. This arrived in August 2010 and has been fully restored. As an alternative to steam, it runs on open days using a vacuum exhauster. Its restoration is told in the news archive.
The Garden Centre
Everything for the gardener is catered for: seeds, plants, shrubs, compost, tools and more.
There is a recently updated café, where you can sit down and relax with home-made food and hot or cold drinks. There are also several shopping outlets.