The photographs in these railway photograph galleries are available for use under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Attribution should include a link to www.nigeltout.com.
Welcome to Snibston Discovery Museum
The entrance and car park for Snibston Discovery Museum just before closure in July 2015.
Snibston Discovery Museum in Coalville, Leicestershire, opened in 1992 on part of the cleared site of the closed Snibston Colliery. Alas, the museum was closed in July 2015 and the site was cleared to become Snibston Colliery Park.
Snibston Discovery Museum was closed in 2015, and the main building was soon demolished. The site was subsequently cleared to form Snibston Colliery Park.
The entrance to Snibston Discovery Museum in March 2016, after closure and protected by Heras fencing.
Demolition of the main museum building is very advanced in March 2016. This is the view from alongside the outside activity area looking inside towards the main museum entrance.
A few weeks later, in April 2016, and there is nothing of the museum building left standing in this view of the site of the main entrance.
By the beginning of May 2016 the site of Snibston Discovery Museum had been completely cleared, though the buildings of the original coal mine in the distance were not touched since they are part of a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and thus have some protection. The original museum entrance was in the foreground and this area later became a car park and play area of the newly created Snibston Discovery Park.
Click here to go to the page with several interactive panoramic photographs inside the museum.
View showing the edge of the play area with car park behind of the newly opened Snibston Discovery Park in 2021. This is looking north — the area in front was the outside activity area and the museum building was situated behind the car park here while the railway headed off into the distance on the right where the people are walking.
View the Photograph Galleries showcasing Snibston Discovery Museum
Further Information
The “Snibston Discovery Park Prospectus” from the early 2000’s states “The Discovery Park takes its name from the former Snibston Colliery, which was active from 1832 until 1983. The site was purchased from British Coal in 1986 by Leicestershire County Council with the aim of creating a new industrial heritage visitor attraction in the area, preserving the core of the historic colliery and the reclamation of derelict and polluted land occupied by the mine's waste tip. All of these were achieved by June 1992, when the site opened to the public as the largest branch of Leicestershire Museums, Arts & Records Service. Snibston is the largest registered museum in the county (reg. no. 545).”
“From the outset Snibston was designed to be a pioneer in terms of the 'hands-on' approach to museum interpretation. Snibston was also the largest new build science museum since the War in the UK and became a beacon of good practice not only because of the integrated interactive approach but also because of its approach to access, both physical and intellectual.” - https://democracy.leics.gov.uk/documents/s5995/Snibston%20Prospectus.pdf
Most of the colliery buildings remaining at Snibston are designated as a ‘Scheduled Monument’ which gives different protection than listing since it is a criminal offense to damage a scheduled monument, The following document gives a good idea of the status of the main colliery remains at Snibston https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1018472?section=official-list-entry
Before the railway track through the site was converted to a footpath the “Snibston Country Park Cycleway, Coalville, Heritage Statement” was issued in 2018. This document gives interesting historical descriptions of nearby structures to the footpath through the site - https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-6575-1/dissemination/theenvir1-344000_2.pdf