All aboard for a journey around the Museums of Cheshire

There are lots of potential stops on a transport-related journey around the Museums of Cheshire. Perhaps the first should be Norton Priory to visit St Christopher, patron saint of travellers.

The second stop might be the National Waterways Museum which tells the tale of the canal system and its far-reaching impact. It was a marvellously self-contained world, and you still catch a sense of that around the locks, docks, narrow boats and warehouses, and visit the museum’s forge, stables and cottages. Water-borne travel is also represented at Birkenhead Priory, the site of the first regulated ferry ‘cross the Mersey.

Visitors from foreign lands are also much in evidence in Cheshire, particularly at Chester’s Grosvenor Museum. The museum’s Roman archaeology collections and galleries are impressive, showcasing Chester’s legions and fortress, and the lives of soldiers, slaves, women and children living there during the Roman period.

The travels of local people are also well represented in the county’s museums. West Park Museum was purpose built to house the Egyptology collections of Victorian explorer Marianne Brocklehurst, who made several journeys to Egypt. Warrington Museum and Art Gallery might almost be considered a journey back in time, with original glass cabinets crammed with treasures from far off lands including the Egyptian coffin of Paikhmennu.

Several of the Museums of Cheshire have collections of artworks and photographs depicting transport of many kinds, including photographs and paintings of canals at Warrington Museum and the Williamson Art Gallery. Those who prefer to see transport in the flesh, as it were, will love the police car at The Museum of Policing in Cheshire, the armoured cars at Cheshire Military Museum, and the fascinating story of Warrington’s Titanic at Warrington Museum.