About Us

Welcome to Lutterworth Museum!

We are an independent museum, staffed & run entirely by volunteers. Our aim is to collect and preserve the documents & artefacts which chart the history of Lutterworth & its surrounding network of villages from earliest times to the present day.

If you want to add your name to our growing list of volunteers to become involved with the project, please let us know!

Our 44 page guide to Lutterworth and District Museum is still on sale at the museum for only £2.00. The guide gives a potted history of the town, and provides more detail about some of the exhibits on display. Ranging from the stone age to the production of the jet engine, this is a great way to get a high level understanding or how Lutterworth developed as a town.

We want the museum to tell the story of Lutterworth – not just the great inventions or the world changing work that was done in our town – but how Lutterworth started and got to where it is today. Of course, we mention the invention of the jet engine and the translation of the bible (!), but there is so much more to know.

The key “pillars” of the museum display will obviously remain, after all you can’t change history, and engines that weigh around a ton aren’t easy to move!! However, we are extending our research and are looking to bring you displays that will open your eyes about the history of the town, along with the people in it.

So, look out for our website and social media announcements, along with posters around the town. Meanwhile…….

CURRENT FEATURES…..

Walk through the history of Lutterworth by following a time line
View exhibits ranging from Roman times to the present day
Consider Lutterworth’s history put in to context
See the working model of Lutterworth Railway Station
See the famous Merlin and Whittle engines in a newly interpreted display
Learn from video and audio presentations which will hopefully enliven your experience
Experience key timeline exhibits that will always be there, and other exhibits that we will rotate over time to keep the visitor experience as fresh as possible
And then come back later as on going development of the displays, which will involve more and more research, brings more of our history to light

Museum Guide

Facilities

Get In Touch!

The "Whittle Room", Ancestry.com, Microfiche Records and Room Hire!

Since we re-opened in the summer, we have made some changes.

On Thursday October 2nd 2025, we were pleased and privileged to welcome Mr Ian Whittle, son of Sir Frank Whittle, to open our new room, The "Whittle Room". Ian, an ex Cathay Pacific airline pilot, flew his own aircraft from Surrey to Coventry on the morning of the 2nd October and joined us to celebrate the work of his late father.

The Whittle Room allows us to display a much wider selection of Whittle memorabilia, including a wall display which charts the development of the jet engine in simple to understand terms. Along with the original W2/700 jet engine that we have on display courtesy of Leicestershire Museums, there is a wide range of original photographs to view along with jet engine parts, a mock up model of Frank Whittle's original test shed at the Ladywood Works, and original documents including Frank Whittle's own correspondence file. In addition, we have a chart which compares jet engine development in Germany and England, and shows who actually got the first patent, who created the first jet engine, and who first flew a jet aircraft.

The room also houses our Rolls Royce Mk3 Merlin engine which was fitted to a Mk1 Hurricane fighter in 1940. A full history of the engine, the aircraft that it was fitted to, the pilots that flew it, the aircraft that they shot down, and even the German pilot that shot our aircraft down is also available, captured in documents and an 11 minute video presentation.

Finally, as if the invention of the jet engine isn't enough, there is the story of Percy Pilcher who, but for a mechanical failure, would have been the first man to fly a powered aircraft, beating the Wright Brothers by years!

The "Whittle Room"

The "Heritage Suite"

Having taken over the entire "High Point" building, we now have the Heritage Suite available which will seat between 40 and 60 people (60 is the maximum allowed).

The Heritage Suite is located upstairs, above the museum rooms, and is accessed by a staircase and a lift for our less able visitors. The room is ideal for business meetings, social group gatherings or small events, and is equipped with a small kitchen which is ideal for making tea and coffee, and doing the washing up afterwards! The room is also fully air conditioned, with the option of electrically operated roof vents.

If you are interested in hiring the room, please get in touch via email at lutterworthmuseum2021@gmail.com.

Ancestry.co.uk, Microfiche Records and Photographs

We are pleased to announce that visitors to the museum now have access to our wide range of local microfiche records, along with FREE access to Ancestry.co.uk worldwide records.

Visitors keen on researching their family history can look for records in either system, free of charge, although we ask that visitors refrain from building their family tree on our system simply because of the issues that this can cause. Records can be printed out at a small cost, and it may even be able to email copies of the records to visitors' home email accounts.

Finally, for those visitors who want to search for old photographs of Lutterworth and the surrounding district, or who want to reminisce about school days past by looking at old school photographs, we are pleased to announce that we now have around 1,200 photographs available to view on our 55" screen. The catalogue is sorted in to streets for Lutterworth, and villages for the surrounding district, so it is easy to access the appropriate folder. The catalogue is continually being updated and edited, so if you have any old photographs of the area that you would like to share with us, and by "old" we mean everything as far back as you can possibly go, please let us know. We won't keep the original, but we will take a digital copy while you wait and include it within our catalogue.

Funding

We are often asked how the museum is funded - Lutterworth and District Museum is funded in a number of ways.

We are very fortunate, and very grateful, for an annual grant from Lutterworth Town Council that covers our fixed costs and utilities. The Town Council believes that the museum is an important way of connecting with our past, and providing the "free entry" facility of the museum for residents and visitors alike is a service that should be provided. Each year the museum responds to the Annual Museums Survey, a national survey which takes operational details from museums and calculates the economic value of the museum to the locality. In 2024 / 25, the survey calculated that Lutterworth and District Museum generated over £90,000 in economic benefit to the local area through tourism and additional spend in the locality from visitors. This is over 5 times the amount of money invested by the Town Council.

The museum is also always on the look out for public grants that would help us to expand or improve what we do. When grants are identified, we complete the application process and if successful the money is spent entirely on the project concerned.

Finally, sales and donations. The museum has a small shop selling books of local interest, Lutterworth themed mugs, fridge magnets etc. We are also fortunate that some visitors kindly make donations to the museum either via card payment or in our donations box.

Every single penny of grant money, sales profit or donation goes directly towards the provision and improvement of the museum. No Trustee or Volunteer receives any payment for the time and effort that they put in to the museum. We do it because we enjoy it.