About
Wardown Park Museum occupies one of Luton's most handsome Victorian buildings — Wardown House — a late-Victorian mansion set within the tranquil green surrounds of Wardown Park on the northern edge of the town. Since opening as a museum in 1931, the building has served as Luton's principal civic museum, housing collections that illuminate the social, industrial, and natural history of Luton and the wider Bedfordshire region across many centuries.
The museum's most celebrated collections relate to the industries that made Luton famous across the world. Chief among these is the hat trade: from the early nineteenth century onward, Luton emerged as the global capital of the straw hat and then the broader millinery industry. The museum holds an outstanding collection of historic hats, hat-making machinery, trade catalogues, designer's pattern books, and photographs that document this remarkable industrial story — from cottage-based straw plaiting and bonnet-sewing through to the factory-dominated industry of the Edwardian era and beyond.
Closely related is the museum's fine collection of Bedfordshire lace and straw plait. Lace-making was a cottage industry woven into the fabric of rural Bedfordshire life for centuries, with thousands of women and children producing pillow lace for sale at markets across the county. Alongside lace, straw plaiting provided vital supplementary income for rural families, who would plait straw into long flat strips for sale to hat manufacturers in Luton and Dunstable. The museum's displays bring these intricate crafts to life with exceptional surviving examples and vivid social history context.
Wardown House itself is part of the attraction. Visitors can admire the Victorian and Edwardian interior features — ornate plasterwork ceilings, decorative tiles, and period fireplaces — which have been preserved and interpreted as part of the museum experience. The surrounding Wardown Park provides a beautiful setting with a lake, mature trees, and open lawns, making the museum an ideal destination for a full day out. The museum is managed by Luton Culture, the charitable trust responsible for Luton's cultural venues, and admission is free.
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Highlights
The Luton Hat Trade Collection
Luton's transformation from market town to global capital of the hat industry is told through one of the most important hat trade collections in Britain. Historic hats spanning over two centuries are displayed alongside hat-making machinery, pattern books, trade catalogues, and manufacturers' samples.
The collection traces the industry from hand-crafted cottage production to mechanised factory output, capturing the moment when Luton's hat factories were supplying headwear to customers across the British Empire and beyond.
Fashion history, industrial history, and local social history combine in this compelling collection.
Bedfordshire Lace Collection
Bedfordshire pillow lace is among the finest regional lace traditions in England, and Wardown's collection is exceptional in its range and quality. Intricate pieces of handmade lace — worked on pillows with dozens of bobbins by women and girls across the county — are displayed alongside the tools, patterns, and personal stories of the makers.
The collection illustrates how lace-making was a vital economic activity for rural Bedfordshire communities from the seventeenth century onward, and how the craft declined as machine-made lace flooded the market in the Victorian era.
Straw Plait Displays
Before the hat factories took over, Luton's hat trade depended on the straw plait produced by thousands of rural workers across Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and beyond. Men, women, and children would plait straw into long flat strips which were then sold at plait markets and fashioned into hat shapes.
Wardown's displays capture this remarkable cottage industry with surviving plait samples, tools, market records, and photographs of plait sellers.
The social history of straw plaiting — and its eventual destruction by cheap imported Chinese plait — is vividly told.
Wardown House Victorian Interiors
Wardown House itself is a significant heritage attraction. Built in the 1870s as a private mansion, the building retains many of its original Victorian and Edwardian interior features — ornate plasterwork ceilings with moulded cornices, decorative encaustic tiled floors, handsome marble fireplaces, and elaborately carved woodwork.
As visitors move through the galleries, these architectural details provide a rich period backdrop that complements the collections beautifully, transforming a museum visit into an experience of Victorian domestic grandeur.
Collections
The Hat Trade
Permanent galleries tracing Luton's transformation into the world capital of the hat and millinery industry, with historic hats, machinery, pattern books, and trade history
Bedfordshire Lace and Straw Plait
Galleries dedicated to the cottage craft traditions of Bedfordshire — pillow lace-making and straw plaiting — with exceptional surviving examples and social history context
Luton Social History
Displays exploring the social and community history of Luton and Bedfordshire across the centuries, with objects, photographs, and personal stories
Decorative Arts and Natural History
Collections of decorative arts objects and natural history specimens relating to the region, housed in the ornate rooms of Victorian Wardown House
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.