Melton Carnegie Museum

There’s a lot in a name. Melton Carnegie Museum is housed in the town’s former Carnegie Library which was built in 1905 thanks to a grant from the richest man in the world.

No, not Elon Musk, but industrialist Andrew Carnegie of Carnegie Hall fame. He was a great philanthropist who gave 90% of his fortune to charitable causes, and was responsible for the building of libraries around the world.

The Carnegie Library building continued to serve the local community until 1977, when it was converted into the town’s museum. The museum began as a small collection aiming to showcase the history of Melton and the people who have lived and worked there from the Bronze Age to the present day.

Today – following a major expansion in 2010 – the museum is full of fascinating artefacts and history which chart the course of life in Melton, with historical finds from more than 4,000 years ago sitting alongside modern artworks and galleries right the way up to the 20th Century.

As befits this most rural of districts, there is a focus on how the farming life of ordinary people intersected with the hunts and field sports undertaken by the landed gentry and royalty who lived in and passed through the market town of Melton Mowbray, which was an important stopping off point on the Great North Road between London and the North, which for 300 years ran through Melton Mowbray.

The museum covers all of this and also includes special exhibitions on the history, development and geographical protection of the town's world-renowned Stilton cheese and pork pie industries plus a look at the often controversial history of fox hunting in the region. It was this regional pastime which inspired Leicestershire’s most iconic mascot the humble Fox, but these days, you’re more likely to see them roaming free and wild than being chased by a pack of hounds.