Exhibition: Cotton to Gold - Collections of the Industrial North West

This January, the magnificent and eccentric mansion will be transformed into a casket for the exquisite treasures of an extraordinary group of Lancashire magnates. As the cotton mills boomed, bringing development and deprivation hand in hand, this group of prominent industrialists privately, and sometimes secretively, poured their wealth into some of the finest and most astonishing collections in the country.

Exceedingly rare Roman coins, priceless medieval manuscripts, Turner watercolours, Tiffany glass, Japanese prints, Byzantine icons, ivory sculptures and even preserved beetles and a Peruvian mummy.

Get lost amongst the treasure and the taxidermy as Cotton to Gold seeks out the stories behind these characters and what motivated them to give it all away. Discover their complicated relationship with the fast-developing world in which they lived and ask yourself are times really so different.

Cotton to Gold is presented in partnership with three publicly owned museums in the North West (Lancashire): Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Haworth Art Gallery (Accrington) and Towneley Hall (Burnley).