St Fagan’s National History Museum

The museum and collection

Located just outside Cardiff, the St Fagans National History Museum is an open-air museum in Wales and is Wales’ largest and most popular heritage attraction. It is home to over forty original buildings from different historical periods and Welsh locations that have been re-erected in a 100-acre parkland. Traditional Welsh crafts and activities are demonstrated to visitors during workshops on a daily basis. The combination of national collections of archaeology and social history make this a unique witness of history. A visit to the National Museum of Wales will be a fulfilling day out for any family or school, because it tells the story of Wales in so many immersive ways.

The assignment

For this engaging museum, we were selected to engineer and manufacture 38 display cases of various shapes and sizes (11 different types in total), including freestanding cases, desktop cases, recessed wall cases and cube cases.

The projects: challenges & result

The showcases were integrated in three new galleries combining social history and archaeology collections: Wales Is..., Life Is... and Gweithdy. These galleries were part of a large scale renovation that took 6 years in total. In July 2019, St Fagans saw its efforts awarded when it was named Museum of the Year "for showing exceptional imagination, innovation and achievement”.