THE DUFTON HOARDE
MUSEUM OF RURAL MEMORY
Knowledge does not only live in institutions or books.
It also lives in landscape, material, work, care and long acquaintance with place.
An artist-made museum created by Dawn Hurton.
Dufton · North Pennines · Cumbria
Opening Autumn 2026
AN ARTIST-MADE MUSEUM
The Dufton Hoarde contains sculpture, fragment texts, Public Registers, moving image and an institutional system created to hold them.
The work has grown through walking, making, reading and sustained attention to the lead-mining landscape of the North Pennines.
It does not reconstruct a complete history or present a collection of original historical artefacts. Instead, sculpture, text, material and museum language are brought together to consider how knowledge survives - and what may disappear when it falls outside the official record.
Built to hold.
PLACED · RETAINED · RECORDED · HELD OPEN
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PLACED · RETAINED · RECORDED · HELD OPEN 〰️
VISIT
Enter the Hoarde through timed public visits, group visits and a limited programme of artist-led encounters.
THE HOARDE
Encounter the sculptures, fragment texts, Public Registers, Keeper's Room and moving image that form the museum.
CURRENT HOLDINGS
FROM THE MUSEUM
Publications, printed matter and artist editions carry the work beyond the museum rooms.
THE KEEPER
The Hoarde is received, recorded and maintained by its Keeper.
WHAT THE PLACE STILL KNOWS
The Hoarde grew through walking the same fell paths; reading research into economic and social change, the preacher’s diary, census entries and emigrant letters; and studying mining maps, old photographs and images of the workings beneath the ground.
It came through rakes, walls and sheep smoots; through hoar frost, water, grass and stone; through the knowledge carried by T’Owd Man and the labour the records barely name.
Rag, fibre, wool, earth pigment and barytes brought another kind of knowledge. The materials warped, cracked, stained and resisted.
I made objects and opened the Registers.
I did not fill the gaps. I kept them in view.
Then the museum slowly appeared.
CREATED AND KEPT BY DAWN HURTON
Dawn Hurton is a contemporary sculptor and artist based in Dufton in the North Pennines. Her practice brings sculpture, fragmentary writing, moving image and institutional forms together to investigate landscape knowledge, material knowledge and the ways in which museums and archives determine what can be preserved.
The Dufton Hoarde is her central current work.
THE DUFTON HOARDE
Museum of Rural Memory
Dufton, Cumbria
Opening Autumn 2026.
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