Milton Keynes Museum

Milton Keynes Museum stands in Wolverton, a town on the southern edge of the new city. It occupies a Victorian farmstead that once belonged to Stacey Hill Farm. The building now holds the Stacey Hill Collection, which shows how people lived and worked in northern Buckinghamshire and southern Northamptonshire from 1800 until the city’s creation in 1967. Visitors can see farm tools, household objects, and early industrial items that tell the story of rural life before the modern grid of roads and roundabouts appeared. A separate gallery displays memorabilia from the nearby Wolverton railway works, where carriages were once built for the London & Birmingham Railway. The Connected Earth collection brings together historic telephones and switchboards, many still working after decades of service. A striking Road Phone vehicle, once used to promote the Post Office, stands among the larger exhibits. The museum’s displays extend beyond everyday objects. In early 2025 a new gallery opened featuring a 150-million-year-old ichthyosaur found at Caldecotte Lake. The specimen joins the Post Office and British Telecom vehicles that once served the region. Volunteers run most of the museum, with only a handful of paid staff keeping things running. They maintain working telephones and switchboards so visitors can hear the clicks and rings of the past. The name Stacey Hill Museum was used until recently, reflecting the farm’s long history in the area. After a serious electrical fire in February 2025, the building closed for two months while repairs were made. Inside, rooms are arranged like a farmyard and a railway yard, with paths that let visitors move from one period to another. The largest room holds the Road Phone and other vehicles, while smaller alcoves show domestic life in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The ichthyosaur gallery draws visitors into the prehistoric past beneath local lakes. Outside, the museum sits beside the West Coast Main Line, where Robert Stephenson’s 1830s Blue Bridge still carries farm tracks over the tracks. The site is easy to reach from Miller’s Way and McConnell Drive, just off the southern edge of Wolverton.