Armagh County Museum

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The Armagh County Museum is a museum in Armagh, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Located on the edge of the tree-lined Mall in the centre of Armagh city, the museum is the oldest County Museum in Ireland, officially opened in 1937.HistoryCharlemont Place National School (1835–1840s)The building was originally established as Charlemont Place National School and the architect may have been Francis Johnston's pupil, William Murray.Armagh Natural History and Philosophical Society (1856–1930)However the school was not a success and the trustees transferred the lease to Armagh Natural History and Philosophical Society in 1856. They utilised the premises as their reading room, library, lecture hall and museum. It was their museum that formed the foundation of what would become Armagh County Museum’s collection. They employed architect Edward Gardner to convert the one room interior into two ground floor rooms and a broad balcony housing the museum above. The Society and museum expanded during the latter half of the nineteenth century and by 1888 it could boast 275 members paying an annual subscription of five shillings each. In that year the interior layout of the building was described thus: "To economise space, the reading room, by the withdrawal of a partition formed of shutters, becomes the stage of the theatre, and the theatre and museum are one. A good collection of specimens has been secured for the illustration of lectures on natural history. The library is well stocked with books in the following departments: – Antiquities, Astronomy, Arts, Biography, Chemistry, Economics, Geography, Geology,and Mineralogy, History, Mechanics, Metaphysics, Microscopy, Natural History, Natural Philosophy, Poetry, and general literature..." In 1891 Art Rooms were built immediately behind the museum and for some years an Art School flourished under the auspices of the Science & Art department of the South Kensington Museum.