The Stewart Museum at Burnby Hall Gardens

The Stewart Museum is dedicated to the collection of our benefactor Major Percy Marlborough Stewart, who lived at Burnby Hall between 1901 and 1962.

Percy was a traveller, philanthropist and collector and who bequeathed his estate to the people of Pocklington to create a public park and preserve his fascinating collection of artefacts which he and his wife Katharine had collected on eight world tours that they completed between 1906 and 1926. Exhibits include Percy’s hunting trophies and a wide variety of exhibits from around the world, several of which have been deemed as being of UNESCO standard. These include tribal art and carvings.

The museum also contains some really interesting family memorabilia. A distant relative of the Churchills and the Earls of Galloway, Percy was one of fourteen children. Amongst these was a sister, Flora, who was a missionary in China between 1891 and 1895 and a victim of the infamous Ku-Cheng massacre, and brothers Arthur who was a settler in Canada, Douglas who was a seafarer lost at sea off Australia in 1888 and, perhaps most notably, Herbert Galloway Stewart, who was English Tutor to the children of Tsar Nicholas II’s sister Xenia between 1908 and 1917 and whose diary of the early days of the Russian Revolution is one of our key exhibits.

Our small museum is situated in the beautiful Burnby Hall Gardens, which are home to a National Collection of over a hundred varieties of Nymphaea (Hardy Water Lilies) which flower on the two ornamental lakes between June and August each year.

So why not come along to visit the Gardens and learn about the fascinating Stewart family who made it all possible? See our website www.burnbyhallgardens.com or visit our Facebook page for more details.