Great Flood Easter Event

Kelham Island Museum will be open to the general public for three days next week (Tuesday 25th – Thursday 27th March, 11am to 4pm) for a one-off Easter event that remembers the Great Sheffield Floods of 1864. The idea is to let visitors experience what it was like to live through the Floods of 1864 when the Dale Dyke Dam burst.

Activities include drop-in craft sessions, where children can take part in activities carried out by a Victorian working class child, re-enactments of the events surrounding the 1864 flood and educational workshops. Pictures of the Victorian and more recent floods will be on display in the Museum.

The activities are all free and the museum café will be open to serve refreshments. For more information, contact the Museum on 0114 2722106.

Press release about the event (pdf)

Get set...go!

The development of the new displays to replace those that were lost in the floods has started. With funding finally in place a new team has been appointed to assist with the process. The team are currently gathering and developing ideas for the new displays. Let us know your thoughts...

Tree felling at Kelham

As part of the long-term flood defence plans for Kelham Island, the week before last saw the cutting down and removal of some of the trees on the river banks and small islands surrounding the Museum.


The tree felling team brought a huge portable crane down to the end of the island. For each tree that needed to be felled, the crane hoisted one of the tree surgeons up into the air to attach chains around the upper branches. Once the chains were secure, the tree surgeon abseiled down to the ground and sawed through the trunk, so that the crane could lift the whole tree away. Not a job for people who don’t like heights!