Ashmolean Museum Broadway

    Ashmolean Museum Broadway

    The 17th-century Tudor House is located in the typically chocolate-boxey Cotswolds village of Broadway and has recently been transformed into a museum after a year-long project. The new museum displays a selection of objects and artworks from Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and will help relay the history of Tudor House, as well as the local area.

    Built in 1659, the Grade II*-listed building was originally a coaching inn but has been adapted and extended over the years and has also been used as a school, a farm and the private residence of Benjamin Chandler who refurbished the property with the Arts and Crafts architect CE Mallows in 1908. The site has more recently held the headquarters of HW Keil Ltd, one of the leading antiques dealerships in the world, and it is thanks to John Keil leasing the building to a charitable trust that has led to it being opened to the public as a museum.

    The ground floor of the property will now explore the building’s early history with objects including a tapestry made at the famous Worcestershire factory of the Sheldon family, who owned the Manor of Broadway between 1539 and 1680. Other objects on display lead visitors on a chronological journey and include fine and decorative art from the 17th to 21st centuries over three floors. Paintings and furniture from the founding collections of the Ashmolean, which Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford in 1683, are also on display and sit alongside silver and glassware as well as portraits by Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.

    Tudor House’s top floor will hold a range of special exhibitions where temporary displays will also be drawn from the Ashmolean’s collections, as well as providing a space for contemporary artists to utilise. The museum’s first exhibition is due to open in May 2014 with works on paper from the Ashmolean collection by John Singer Sargent, as part of the Broadway Arts Festival.

     

    Ashmolean Museum Broadway, Tudor House, Broadway, Worcestershire WR12 7DP.

    Tel: 01386 859 047. www.ashmoleanbroadway.org

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