McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Greenock

Part of my reason for travelling to Scotland last year, and Greenock in particular, was to do some family tree research. My paternal grandmother was born in Greenock, her grandfather having been moved up there from Kent in the early 1900s to work at the Torpedo Factory which was, at the time, an extremely secretive job. My first stop therefore was to the McLean Museum where I had been hoping to find more information about the factory. There was, in fact, barely any mention of it that I hadn’t already found elsewhere – a veil of secrecy seems to still hang around the details – but there was plenty of other items of interest in the museum.

The Museum is part of the Watt Institution, named after the inventor James Watt who was born in Greenock – you may have heard of him in relation to the Watt Steam Engine. The Institution also includes the Watt Library (more of which later) and the Inverclyde Archives. The museum opened in 1876 and has been managed by Inverclyde Council since the 1970s.

The focus here is largely on local history and people though I was surprised to see items from other cultures around the world including Egyptian artefacts. My first focus however was on Greenock’s history. Ship building was a very important part of Greenock’s industrial life and Inverclyde was at one point one of the world’s largest shipbuilding communities. This was illustrated in the museum with lots of different models of ships on display throughout the building.

There were also some displays about local life in Greenock and some beautiful stained glass windows in the building itself, which I also enjoyed walking around.

And as mentioned before there were also items from Egypt as well as some dinosaur skeletons.

The art gallery space upstairs wasn’t very big but was well laid out (I was the only person there) and had paintings mainly by Scottish painters on display. My absolute favourite piece however was this beautiful sculpture of a girl dancing. Called Belita it is by George Henry Paulin (1888-1962). His other works include war memorials throughout the UK and Europe and the headstone for the grave of Andrew Carnegie in New York.

Also inside the building is the the Watt Library which opened here in 1837 though before that it was the Greenock subscription library that was founded in 1783 (in fact it may even have been the first subscription library in Scotland). It specialises in local history and archives which is why I was interested in also paying it a visit. It’s small, but perfectly formed and I had a lot of help from the staff and volunteers that work there who pulled up as much information as they could about the torpedo factory and some of the other factories my ancestors worked in. It was a nicely Gothic style building – the architect was Edward Blore who also designed part of Buckingham Palace and Abbotsford. The statue is of James Watt.

The staff were friendly throughout and I found it to be a lovely local museum set in a quite impressive building. Entry is free.