Museums - Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens

The Sunderland Museum, headquarters of the Sunderland Antiquarian and Natural History Society, was taken over by the Sunderland Town Council in 1846 and was the first local authority museum in Britain outside of London. The early collection included material from the Sunderland Subscription Museum of 1821. A purpose-built library, museum, and winter gardens was opened in Mowbray Park in 1879. Today the winter garden, which contains over 1,500 rare plant species, has been reconstructed after having been destroyed in the 1940s, and the library has relinquished its space in the complex, which itself has since expanded.
The museum's collections cover local history, industrial history, natural history, geology, decorative arts, fine art, archaeology, and ethnography. Containing around 1,000 items, the ethnographic collection comprises works from Africa, Samoa, New Zealand, South and East Asia, and the Americas. Important donations were made to the museum by Edward Backhouse and Dr. C. T. Trenchman.