Heritage Open Day: Pioneers Museum

Pioneers Museum

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The Pioneers Museum on Toad Lane has been taking part in their second heritage weekend this weekend.

The museum hosted special displays and talks throughout Thursday 12 September, Friday 13 September and Saturday 14 September.

Jonathan Priestly, from the Pioneers Museum, said: “We opened last summer but we only had the ground floor and had to make the building safe and let people come in for a few things.”

Celebrating their second heritage weekend, the museum has included an archive treasures display, graveyard tours showing the place were fifteen of the original pioneers are buried, a from wool to the world display and specialist talks, including ‘If These Walls Could Talk’, by Gillian Lonergan, the museum's head of heritage resources.

Jonathan added: “We have had a lot of interest. With museums you usually find peak and slow times but we haven’t really seen that.”

The museum exists to preserve the original store of the Rochdale Pioneers and to generate an understanding of the ideals and principles of the Co-operative movement.

The Pioneer’s Museum has seen 15,000 visitors since October and recently celebrated 150 years of the Co-operation movement.