Major funding for Mid Suffolk’s Food Museum
The Food Museum in Stowmarket, Suffolk, has been awarded grants of £3,900,000 by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and £1,000,000 by Mid Suffolk District Council to enable major transformation and conservation.
The funding will help the museum to create new displays at the heart of the site to tell the story of how our food is made. It will conserve three stunning historic buildings – a Grade II* listed medieval barn, the 18th-century Abbot’s Hall and a Victorian factory building formerly located in Bury St Edmunds and moved to the museum in the 1980s.
The Food Museum is the UK’s only museum dedicated to food. The museum’s mission is to connect people with where food comes from and the communities that grow and make it. The visitor experience at the museum is structured around the headings Grow, Make and Eat. The project focuses on the ‘Make’ part of the story of food.
Over five years from autumn 2025, the project will deliver new engaging displays, bringing objects out of storage from the museum’s rich collection and collecting new items which reflect 20th and 21st-century stories and experiences.
Displays will include a new gallery in The Factory which explores some of our most common shopping basket items and the journeys they make to reach our homes, the people who make them and how they are made.
In The House the museum will show how food is made in the home, the history of kitchen technology, how we learn to cook and how food reflects who we are.
The project will make accessibility improvements to the site, including surfaced paths and lifts. It will also create a new events space with capacity for 300 people to enable the museum to grow its schools and events programme.
An rich programme of activities will include a series of exhibitions on food in wartime, the involvement of Gypsy Roma Traveller communities in harvest and how food has been used as a weapon. Co-production with audiences will be at the centre of this work, and the museum will be working with a wide range of partners to deliver activities.
The project includes new volunteering programmes, including corporate and youth volunteering initiatives.
Museum Director, Jenny Cousins, said, ‘We are delighted to have been awarded the funding to transform the Food Museum. We want people to have a great time at the museum, learn something and reflect on their relationship with food. The project will not only improve the condition of historic buildings and objects, it will build on the work we have done over the last 10 years to create a top-quality experience for local residents and visitors to the area alike.’
Liz Bates, Director, England, Midlands & East at The National Heritage Lottery Fund, said: “We are pleased to support the Food Museum with a grant of £3.9million, as we celebrate awarding a total of £2bn of National Lottery and other funding to projects across the Midlands & East of England. The scale of the museum’s vision to connect people with the everyday history of food production is truly impressive. Thanks to National Lottery players, this project will not only preserve important heritage but also spark people's interest in how food shapes our lives and how food and sustainability intersect.”
Cllr Tim Weller, Mid Suffolk District Council's cabinet member for environment, culture and wellbeing, said: “This funding will take the Food Museum’s impressive transformation to the next level.
“It means the museum can deliver further improvements to the site and attract more visitors – while also enabling its commercial activities to support the delivery of its educational mission and community work.
"We're delighted that for every £1 Mid Suffolk District Council has invested in the Food Museum, it has brought in £10.55 from external funding sources – and we can’t wait to see these improvements take shape."
Caption: The project will conserve and improve three large buildings on the museum site.
Caption: The stunning Medieval Barn will house an introduction to the museum site.
Caption: Abbot’s Hall will undergo external repairs and new displays will be created inside the building.
Caption: The Factory, part of the former Robert Boby works, will house an exhibition, new toilets and a large events space
About The Food Museum
The Food Museum, formerly the Museum of East Anglian Life, is a large 84-acre estate with 17 historic buildings, animals, gardens, river walk and a collection of over 40,000 objects. Through exhibitions, activities, events and programmes, the museum seeks to engage visitors with where their food comes from and the communities that grow and make it. The museum is located in Stowmarket in East Anglia, known as ‘Britain’s Breadbasket’.
About The National Lottery Heritage Fund
Our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future. That’s why as the largest funder for the UK’s heritage we are dedicated to supporting projects that connect people and communities to heritage, as set out in our strategic plan, Heritage 2033. Heritage can be anything from the past that people value and want to pass on to future generations. We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to the past.
Over the next 10 years, we aim to invest £3.6billion raised for good causes by National Lottery players to make a decisive difference for people, places and communities.
Follow @HeritageFundUK on Twitter/X, Facebook and Instagram and use #NationalLottery #HeritageFund
Further information
For further information, images and interviews please contact Chloe Brett at the Food Museum on 01449 612229 / chloe@foodmuseum.org.uk
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Suffolk Chamber