Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens

Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens stands in the centre of Sunderland, beside Mowbray Park. The museum opened in 1846 as the first municipally funded museum outside London. Its original Athenaeum Building on Fawcett Street housed the first artwork ever commissioned by a town council. In 1879 the museum moved to a larger building next to the park, including a winter garden modelled on the Crystal Palace. A parachute mine damaged the Winter Garden during the Second World War and it was rebuilt in the 1960s. A lottery-funded refurbishment in 2001 added a new Winter Garden extension and improved facilities. The museum contains a Designated Collection of national importance. Among its exhibits is the only known British example of a gliding reptile, found in Eppleton quarry. Other highlights include locally made Sunderland Lustreware pottery, a stuffed lion acquired in 1879, and the remains of a walrus brought back from Siberia in the 1880s. The first Nissan car made in Sunderland is also on display, along with the skeletal remains of a local man and a dinosaur bone. The museum’s Lowry collection includes six works and thirty on long-term loan, second only to Salford and Manchester. Visitors enter a building that once hosted U.S. President Ulysses Grant at the laying of its foundation stone. The Winter Gardens now contain more than two thousand flowers and plants. The museum’s library moved out in 1995, leaving extra space for exhibitions. Nearby, the new City Library and Arts Centre houses the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art. The area around Mowbray Park offers views of the city and a quiet place to walk after visiting the museum.