Broadfield House Glass Museum to close…?

In mid-January, I heard from a reliable source that the dastardly Dudley Council is proposing to close this museum in Spring next year. For those of you who don’t know it, Broadfield is a national treasure and is, to my knowledge, the only museum dedicated to glass in the country. It’s also one of the very few public locations where pioneering exhibitions can be mounted. These have opened up new areas of research to us all – decades of invaluable exhibitions have preceded them.
Most of these have relied on Broadfield’s extensive library and archive, located at the museum and its sister institution Himley Hall, where many company, designer and maker archives have been carefully preserved and made available to the public.
British glassmakers had a global reputation for excellence in glass making and cutting from the early 19th century onwards. This was based in Stourbridge, where the museum is located. Broadfield not only commemorates the products made, but is also the only museum to record the valuable social and economic history related to the industry. Closing this museum would be like erasing a museum dedicated to the Staffordshire or Ohio potteries.
This industry has now gone, but the museum remains…only if you help. Dudley County Council – you should be disgraced with yourselves for choosing to close the lid on the treasure that history has given you.
If you do one thing today, please give your support by signing our online petition by clicking here. It only takes 2 minutes of your time to save over 200 years of glass history…and much, much more. Don’t let Dudley Council take this national treasure away from you.