About
Thirsk Museum occupies the house on Kirkgate where Thomas Lord was born in 1755 — the man who founded Lord's Cricket Ground and gave his name to the headquarters of the sport worldwide. Lord's father was a Yorkshire Catholic landowner whose family had been dispossessed after the Jacobite rising, reduced to working as a labourer, and the modest market-town house reflects that reversal rather than any prosperity. Lord went south, became a bowler and attendant at the White Conduit Club, and in 1787 opened a private ground in Marylebone for the gentlemen who that same year formed the Marylebone Cricket Club. The ground moved twice before settling at St John's Wood in 1814.
That connection gives the museum a national dimension, and its cricket collection is built around it. But the bulk of the displays are properly local, covering the history of Thirsk and its district: the market place and the trades that worked around it, the racecourse, agriculture on the surrounding plain, schooling, chapel and the everyday material of a North Yorkshire town.
Two particular strands stand out. One is the Thirsk railway disaster of 1892, when a signalman who had been on duty for far too long after the death of his child fell asleep and an express ran into a goods train. The case became a landmark in the regulation of railway working hours, and the museum tells it with the local detail that the national accounts omit. The other is the Busby Stoop chair, a wooden chair long said to be cursed and connected with an eighteenth-century hanging, which the museum displays suspended from the ceiling so that nobody can sit in it — a decision that visitors find either sensible or delightfully absurd, and occasionally both.
Admission is free, with donations invited, and the museum opens seasonally from before Easter to early November. It should not be confused with The World of James Herriot, a separate and quite different museum a few doors along the same street in the former veterinary surgery of Alf Wight.
The combination is an odd one on paper — the birthplace of a national sporting institution, a cursed chair, a railway disaster and the ordinary trades of a Yorkshire market town — but it holds together because all of it happened here, and the museum makes no attempt to smooth the collection into a single theme. Visitors who come for the cricket generally stay for the rest.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Do not confuse this with The World of James Herriot, a separate museum a few doors along the same street in Alf Wight's old veterinary surgery.
- Check the season and the days: the museum runs from before Easter to early November, closes on Sundays, and shuts at 13:00 on Wednesdays.
- Entry is free, so this is an easy stop even if you only have half an hour, though the collection rewards longer.
- Look up for the Busby Stoop chair — it hangs from the ceiling specifically so that nobody can sit in it.
- Cricket enthusiasts should allow extra time; the Thomas Lord material is the reason many visitors come from well outside Yorkshire.
- Talk to the volunteer stewards, particularly about the 1892 railway disaster, which they tell far better than the labels can.
- The building has steps and a staircase with no lift, so contact the museum in advance if that is a problem.
- Park in the market place or a town car park and walk; Kirkgate itself has very limited parking.
Highlights
The Birthplace of Thomas Lord
The museum's building is its most significant object: the Kirkgate house where Thomas Lord was born in 1755, into a family that had lost its Yorkshire estates in the aftermath of the Jacobite risings and was reduced to labouring.
The modesty of the house is the point. From it came the man who established the ground at Marylebone that became the permanent home of cricket and the seat of the Marylebone Cricket Club, and whose name is now attached to the sport's most famous address anywhere in the world.
Very few English market towns can claim a comparable connection.
The Cricket Collection
Built around the Thomas Lord connection, the cricket material covers the origins of the modern game in the late eighteenth century, the founding of the MCC in 1787, the successive Lord's grounds and the codification of the laws. It also covers cricket locally, in a county where the game has an unusually strong hold, with club records, photographs and equipment.
For visitors who make the pilgrimage on the strength of the Lord's connection alone, the displays supply the context that a plaque on the wall could not.
The Busby Stoop Chair
Hanging from the ceiling, out of anyone's reach, is a plain wooden chair carrying one of North Yorkshire's better-known legends: that it belonged to Thomas Busby, hanged in the eighteenth century at the crossroads that still bears the name Busby Stoop, and that misfortune follows anyone who sits in it.
The chair was moved here from a local public house and deliberately suspended so that no one can put the story to the test. Whatever one makes of the legend, it is a genuinely memorable piece of display, and it is invariably the exhibit visitors describe afterwards.
The 1892 Thirsk Railway Disaster
In 1892 an express ran into a goods train near Thirst after a signalman, kept on duty following the death of his young child and having had no sleep, failed to protect the line. The subsequent inquiry became a landmark in the regulation of railway working hours and in the wider argument about responsibility for accidents caused by exhaustion.
The museum's account brings out the local specifics — the man, the family, the town's reaction — that the standard national narratives leave out, and it remains one of the most affecting displays in the building.
Collections
Thirsk Museum holds the local collection of a North Yorkshire market town, housed in the Kirkgate birthplace of Thomas Lord, founder of Lord's Cricket Ground. Its most distinctive holdings relate to Lord himself and to the early history of organised cricket, including the founding of the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1787 and the successive Lord's grounds.
Local material covers Thirsk market place and its trades, agriculture in the Vale of Mowbray, schooling, chapel life, domestic objects, costume and photographs, together with the town's racecourse and sporting traditions.
Transport holdings include material on the 1892 Thirsk railway disaster, a case that influenced the regulation of railway working hours. Among individual objects, the Busby Stoop chair, displayed suspended from the ceiling, is the best known.
Thomas Lord and Cricket
Displays on Lord's birth in this house, his move to London, the founding of the MCC and the successive Lord's grounds, alongside local cricketing history.
The Town and Its District
Local history galleries covering Thirsk market place and trades, agriculture, the racecourse, the 1892 railway disaster and everyday life in the Vale of Mowbray.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.