Unique Shropshire museum celebrating 25 quirky years

Celebrating a quarter of a century is a place that has become regarded as one of Shropshire's hidden gems – The Land of Lost Content national museum of popular culture.

The Craven Arms museum in the the old Market Hall on Market Street is a repository for the quirky collection of Stella Mitchell, 64, who has been archiving everything from decades-old toys and technology to magazines, record and even food packaging, since her days as an art student in Birmingham 47 years ago.

She and husband Dave first put her collection on public display when living in West Sussex in 1991, moving to Shropshire and Craven Arms 13 years ago.

In that time more than quarter of a million people have come to look at the vast array of long-gone everyday items and the museum has gone from relative obscurity to a nationally known archive, with tourism awards and a certificate of excellence from Trip Advisor.

Stella said the museum's success had been against all odds, proof that a good venue with a strong niche could survive and thrive, even in a harsh financial climate.

She said: "Small museums are finding their existence precarious all over the UK, but they often rely heavily on funding from outside sources.

"We have succeeded without any funding whatsoever, but in the thirteen years the Land of Lost Content has been in Craven Arms it has paid over £10,000 to the various tourism bodies and almost £40,000 in rates."

The museum concentrates on everything Britain has produced for the past 100 years and has 32 major displays covering subjects such as pop music, food and drink, fashion and holidays.

What singles it out is it's focus on yesterday's mass produced and mundane items – the kinds of things that were so everyday, no one thought of them as very significant at the time.

However such things are the stuff our most personal memories are made of, she said, and in the past 25 years memorabilia had become a big industry.

"The idea of a museum devoted to the lives and memories of ordinary people was quite new in 1991," Stella said, "but the bandwagon is now up and running everywhere.

"The novelty value meant my collection got a lot of press in its early days, although most of that publicity was along the lines of stifled amusement or even loud sniggers.

"The idea of a museum displaying objects of very little monetary worth was a curious concept but there were, and are, many kinds of worth and value.

"Who can put a value on the first bike you learned to ride on or the TV set you watched Bill and Ben on?

"What about your first computer or the mobile phone you consigned to the scrap when a smaller one seemed better?" she said.

Some of Stella's recent purchases include the bluebirds from the gates of the historic Blue Bird Toffee factory and a rare Sex Pistols T-shirt.

She has also lent parts of her collection to museums and exhibitions across the country, including the South Banks' 50 year commemoration of the Festival of Britain in 2011 and the National Trust's celebration 1960s "Brutalist" architecture in London in 2014 – in which Land of Lost Content memorabilia was used to furnish a flat in the iconic Balfron Tower, in 60s style.

This year will be no different, she said.

"We have been called upon to help with an Alzheimers charity exhibition in London in August, and the Black Country Living Museum are borrowing 1930's posters to replicate for a forthcoming extension," she said.

The museum is open to the public every day excepts Wednesdays and Sundays, from 11am to 5pm, closed on, together with its Icons Café and Gift Shop.