In the Alex Hann Exhibition Gallery this year.
Somerset Miners: Welfare and Health Care – February to June 2025
This exhibition has been curated by the Bath Medical Museum working with the Radstock Museum, where the exhibition is located. It has benefited from existing knowledge and new research conducted by both Museums, with essential contributions from local ex–miners. Aspects of the exhibition refer to mining conditions in the Victorian period, giving visitors a sense of historical change during the hundred years prior to the closure of the last two Somerset mines in 1973.
The Somerset coalfield was nationally, one of the less extensive coalfields, yet the effects on miners’ health of coalface working in the challenging narrow seams was significant, under recognised, and often, life threatening.
The exhibition explores issues such as living and working conditions; serious medical conditions directly arising from working underground; rescue efforts in the event of accidents and treatment given to miners in the pit, at home and in hospital. It also explores wider matters arising from injuries and ill health, such as the push for compensation and better working conditions supported by the Friendly Societies and the Miners Association, followed by the NUM.
Entry is during normal museum Opening Hours and is included in your annual Admission Ticket.
Music of the Somerset Coalfield: three centuries of local music making – July to November 2025
From 1st July to 30th November this year, Radstock Museum will be presenting an exhibition exploring and celebrating local music making. The exhibition starts with “west gallery” church music from the early eighteenth century and then moves on through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to folk songs, miner’s songs and playground songs.
The display will include some wonderful instruments, one of which is a serpent, a rarely seen woodwind instrument. There will also be a violin made in Camerton by Henry Lye. Lye’s violins were much valued and were played in the world famous Hallé orchestra.
Headsets will be available to allow visitors to the Museum to hear examples of local folk music.
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