The Foxfield Railway in Staffordshire has been awarded £9,500 by the Association of Independent Museums and the National Lottery Heritage Fund to improve its offer at the historic Foxfield Colliery.
Thanks to the generosity of National Lottery Players, Foxfield has been awarded funding as part of AIM’s ‘New Stories: New Audiences’ scheme to enable small museums to develop and broaden their offer to new and non-traditional audiences.
Foxfield will produce new displays and interpretation panels telling the story of Foxfield Colliery and in particular the lives of women, children and animals who worked in coal mines. NSNA funding will also allow the railway to create an education pack and AV presentation telling the story of the colliery, as well as improve the presentation of the historic colliery buildings.
Foxfield Colliery opened in 1880 and closed in 1965, and was served by a private mineral railway, opened in 1893, with a connection to the mainline at Blythe Bridge. The Foxfield Light Railway Society began to operate trains over the preserved line in 1967.
Foxfield’s Museum Manager, Anthony Dawson, said “Thanks to the generosity of National Lottery Players and the Association of Independent Museums, Foxfield will be able to breathe new life into its colliery. The Foxfield Railway is unique in still having part of the colliery complex the railway once served, including the ferocious Foxfield Bank. This project will tell new, engaging stories and able us to open the colliery on a monthly basis.”
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