Making a Museum
Creating the Great North Museum (Hancock)
The Hancock Museum
The Great North Museum: Hancock (GNM) was constructed in 1884 as the New Museum of Natural History. The Grade II* listed building was renamed The Hancock Museum in 1890 after the death one of the prominent members of the Natural History Society of Northumbria, John Hancock, that same year.
Redesign & Restoration
The redesign and restoration of the Hancock building was contracted to the architecture firm Farrells . It was to be completed from 2003-2009 and would cost upwards of £26 million. The proposed plans for the museum would bring together the collections of the Hancock Museum, the Museum of Antiquities, and the Shefton Museum. This transition would turn the site from a natural history collection into a museum that covered both centuries and continents worth of information.
Farrells' plans for the GNM kept the main structure of the original Hancock building intact. The layouts of the interior rooms were opened out to accommodate the flow between exhibitions showcasing the newly added collections . Not only would existing artefacts have to be considered when designing the new space, but also ones that had been added to the collection. This kind of redesign required considerations of both functionality and best museum practices for displaying and preserving artefacts.
The Great North Museum: Hancock 2.0
To restore and redesign a Grade II* listed building into a contemporary museum, accommodations had to be made to update the space for its new role. Sir Terry Farrell and his firm worked with exhibition designers, Casson Mann, and museum professionals to create a space that not only would be in keeping with their architectural vision, but also the requirements necessary to transform the space into an open and more accessible museum.
GNM First Floor Gallery Site Plan. Copyright: TF-2022-12-05-005, FIRST FLOOR.jpg, Farrell (Sir Terry) Archive, Newcastle University Special Collections, GB 186, kindly loaned by The Sir Terry Farrell Foundation.
GNM First Floor Gallery Site Plan. Copyright: TF-2022-12-05-005, FIRST FLOOR.jpg, Farrell (Sir Terry) Archive, Newcastle University Special Collections, GB 186, kindly loaned by The Sir Terry Farrell Foundation.
No architectural plans go from concept to final product without multiple drafts. Initial plans for the Great North Museum planned for two cafes or possibly adding design decals to the side of the new wing. The final design was the product of multiple visions rather than the single dream of one designer. This collaboration can be seen through each design variation.
Layout Drawing of GNM Long Barrel Section View. Copyright: TF-2022-12-05-005, LONG SECTION.jpg, Farrell (Sir Terry) Archive, Newcastle University Special Collections, GB 186, kindly loaned by The Sir Terry Farrell Foundation.
Layout Drawing of GNM Long Barrel Section View. Copyright: TF-2022-12-05-005, LONG SECTION.jpg, Farrell (Sir Terry) Archive, Newcastle University Special Collections, GB 186, kindly loaned by The Sir Terry Farrell Foundation.
Since the 2009 unveiling, the Great North Museum: Hancock has been adapted to fulfil the needs of its new role as a flagship museum of the North East. The museum has evolved into a must-visit attraction with an average of over 300,000 visitors. The site even was Highly Commended for Interior Design at the World Architecture Festival in 2009 and won the RIBA Regional Award for the North East 2010.
Find Out More
Newcastle University Library Special Collections & Archives collects, preserves, promotes, and provides access to unique and distinctive books and archives. These resources are made available not only to our own university staff and students, but to researchers from other institutions and to the wider community.
To find out more about our holdings please look at our Collections Guide. To discover how you can consult materials see Use our Collections. The Sir Terry Farrell collection will be available for research in October 2023 through the Philip Robinson Library Special Collections Research Reserve. To make an appointment contact the Special Collections team.
This digital exhibition has been created for the Newcastle University Special Collections by Kara Anderson as part of the Newcastle University Museum Studies MA placement programme. Images used in this exhibition have been used with the permissions of Farrells and uses material kindly loaned by the Sir Terry Farrell Foundation. To learn about what it’s like working with born-digital items in an archive, read Kara’s blog post on her experience working with the collection to create this digital exhibition.
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