Shoemakers' Museum: in Street, Somerset

 Street is probably best known these days for its cut-price 'shopping village'. Busloads of people come from miles away and leave laden with shopping bags full of bargains from Next, Superdry, M&S, Ecco, Le Creuset, and heaven knows where else.

But for two hundred years it was famous for being the home of Clarks shoes. Remember the sandals we used to wear as children? The desert boots we wore when we grew up? Yes, those - and many other iconic items of footwear. Of course, Clarks shoes still exist and are doing very nicely thank you - but like so many other things, they are no longer made in the UK, though the company's headquarters are still here.

And now there is a museum  - Shoemakers Museum. I went along expecting to see those red sandals and to find out more about the history of shoemaking - but in fact, this rather lovely museum is about much more than shoes: it's very much about the Quaker family which founded the company. A notice early on tells us that: Quakers were committed to equality, integrity and peace. They work for a fairer and more sustainable world. It's more than a faith, it's a way of life. The Quaker beliefs and social networks of the Clark family inspired their work for abolition, suffrage, social justice and refuge. Their values influenced how they ran their business, treated their workers and supported their Somerset community. Quakers believed that God could be found anywhere, not just in a church, and they were consequently perceived to be radicals. They were banned from attending university till 1871, so many of them pursued business careers instead.

This was the case with the two brothers who founded the company, Cyrus and James Clark, about two hundred years ago. They came from a Quaker farming family in Street, which was then a small village. Cyrus had a sheepskin rug business. James had the idea - so simple, but so good! - of using the sheepskin offcuts to make slippers, and he commissioned skilled shoemaker Esau Whitnell to design and make the earliest pairs. At that time, shoes were not made in factories, but by outworkers at home. And so it began.

Those first slippers!

The company quickly became successful, eventually having many other factories both in the UK and abroad - the ground floor of the museum tells the story of the company's expansion. There's an endearing film in which several former workers recall what it was like to work for Clarks. All of them say it was like a family. There were social clubs, and on Fridays, one says, everyone went over the road to the pub. There were disputes, of course. People were paid by piecework, and some got a bit carried away and tried to snaffle the lion's share of work - these were called 'grabbers'. But by and large, it really does sound as if Clarks was a very good place to work. Certainly, when all the UK factories eventually closed towards the end of the 20th century, their employees - many of whom had worked for Clarks their whole lives - felt bereft. But the company couldn't fight the way the world was changing, with globalisation meaning that it was much cheaper to produce shoes in the far east. 

Workers in the canteen.

Where the lower floor tells the story of the family, and also of how shoe manufacturing developed, and of the people who made the shoes, the upper floor is devoted to the shoes themselves.

That iconic red sandal - and the Happy Shoe Company.

Marketing posters

The Clarks family are no longer at the helm of the company they founded. But there's no denying the lasting influence they have had on Street. Concerned for the health and well-being of their workers, they funded the building of houses, a library, and an open-air swimming pool which is still used today. Although the factories have closed now - all manufacturing is now done abroad - the shopping village mentioned earlier was built on their land and bears their name, and provides employment for many local people. You can also find out in the museum about how many of the family members absolutely tried to live their lives in accordance with those Quaker ideals.  They were actively against slavery and in support of votes for women, and they welcomed and housed persecuted people from all over the world.

Display indicating how the whole town developed round the shoe-making business.

And there's another, unexpected facet to the museum. A distant cousin of Cyrus and James, Alfred Gillett (1814-1904), moved to Street from Yeovil, where he had been an ironmonger, in the 1870s. He was a skilled and enthusiastic fossil collector. There were at the time a number of quarries in Street, from which blue lias stone was extracted - it was used in many buildings in the town, including the one in which the museum is housed. Alfred discovered some extraordinary fossils of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, and these are now displayed in a gallery in the museum, where there's also a display devoted to Mary Anning, the Victorian fossil collector from Lyme Regis.

The museum consists of a modern extension sympathetically added to an old building, Abbey Grange, which was bought by the Clarks in 1890, and used for a variety of purposes - including at one time as a home for refugees. It sits in a large green space with an old orchard and mature trees; the museum only opened last year, but I suspect that eventually this space will become a garden. It's a tranquil counterpoint to - or refuge from! - the shopping village next door. 

It's a well-designed building, spacious and pleasant to wander round. And it tells you much more more than you might expect, as all the best museums do.