About
The Ted Lewis Centre at Barton-upon-Humber is a museum and archive devoted to the writer who effectively invented British noir. Ted Lewis grew up in Barton, went to art school in Hull, worked in animation in London, and in 1970 published Jack's Return Home, a short, bleak, precisely observed novel about a London gangman returning to a northern town for his brother's funeral. Filmed the following year as Get Carter, with Michael Caine and a screenplay and direction by Mike Hodges, it became one of the defining British films of its decade, and its reputation has grown ever since.
The Centre exists because Lewis himself had largely disappeared from view. He wrote nine novels, drank heavily, returned to Barton and died there in 1982 aged forty-two. Only in the last twenty years has his standing been properly re-established, with critics recognising that GBH, his last novel, is as good as anything in the genre, and that the whole tradition of British crime writing that followed - grim, provincial, unsentimental - starts largely with him.
The collections cover both the writer and the film. There is the chair Michael Caine used on the set of Get Carter, first editions owned by the film's producer and director, an original script, graphics and memorabilia, together with Lewis's own art and music, audio-visual presentations and a bookshop. Outside there is a Get Carter experience, and the museum will point visitors towards the locations and connections that survive locally.
Practical arrangements are straightforward and generous. Walk-in visiting is on Sundays from 11:00 to 15:00 through a season from April to early December, admission is free with donations welcomed, and booked visits by individuals or groups can be arranged at any time of year. There is ramp access, level display areas and large-print guides, and refreshments are available.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Walk-in visiting is Sundays only, 11:00-15:00, from around early April to early December.
- Outside those Sundays the Centre opens all year for booked visits - telephone 07803 504794 or use the website form.
- Entry is free, with donations welcomed.
- Sunday parking in the nearby Heron and Boyes car park is unrestricted; weekday parking there is limited to two hours.
- The Centre has ramp access, level display areas and large-print guides.
- Read or rewatch Get Carter first if you can - the exhibition assumes some familiarity and is richer for it.
- Ask about GBH; the late novels are the part of Lewis's work most visitors have never encountered.
- Combine with Baysgarth House Museum and the Ropewalk, both about ten minutes' walk away.
Highlights
Michael Caine's chair from Get Carter
The chair used by Michael Caine on the set of the 1971 film is among the Centre's best-known objects, and it does the job that a single well-provenanced prop can do better than any amount of interpretation: it makes a famous film physically real. Around it the Centre assembles material connected to the production - graphics, publicity, stills and memorabilia - and uses the film's enormous later reputation as the way into the writer behind it.
Visitors who arrive as film enthusiasts generally leave having discovered a novelist they had not heard of, which is precisely the Centre's intention.
Jack's Return Home and the invention of British noir
Published in 1970, Jack's Return Home is short, cold and unusually well observed, and it broke with a British crime tradition that had been either genteel or imitative of America. Lewis set his gangman in a recognisable northern industrial town, gave him a family, a funeral and a grievance, and wrote the violence without relish.
The Centre sets out how the book was written and received, its relationship to Barton and the Humber bank, and its influence on almost everything that followed in British crime fiction, from Derek Raymond onwards.
The original script and first editions
The collection includes an original Get Carter script and first editions owned by the film's producer and director, which together document how a novel became a film: what was cut, what was moved from Scunthorpe and the Humber to Newcastle, and how Mike Hodges' screenplay reshaped the story for the screen.
For anyone interested in adaptation this is unusually good material, since it allows a direct comparison between the printed novel and the working document that turned it into one of the most admired British films of the 1970s.
Ted Lewis, artist and musician
Lewis studied at Hull College of Art and worked in animation in London - including, by most accounts, on the Beatles' Yellow Submarine - and he drew, painted and played jazz throughout his life. The Centre displays his art and music alongside the writing, which corrects the impression of a novelist who happened to produce one famous book.
It also makes his career legible: a provincial art-school talent who moved to London, worked in commercial creative industries, wrote nine novels and returned to the town he came from.
Collections
The Ted Lewis Centre holds material on the novelist Ted Lewis, born 1940 and died at Barton-upon-Humber in 1982, and on the film made from his best-known book. Holdings include the chair used by Michael Caine on the set of Get Carter, an original film script, first editions owned by the film's producer and director, graphics, stills and production memorabilia, together with Lewis's own artwork and music, editions of his nine novels including the reappraised late work GBH, and audio-visual presentations covering his life and influence on British crime writing.
The Centre also interprets the Barton and Humber bank landscape that shaped his fiction, and runs an on-site bookstore.
Jack's Return Home
The 1970 novel, its writing, reception and influence on British crime fiction.
Get Carter on Screen
The 1971 film: script, first editions, memorabilia and Michael Caine's chair.
The Whole Writer
Lewis's art, music, animation work and later novels, including GBH.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.