It was founded by W. E. S. Turner of the university in 1943. One of the exhibits is the wedding dress of Helen Nairn (Turner's wife) which is made of glass fibre. This has been selected as one of the items in the BBC's A History of the World in 100 Objects.
The Traditional Heritage Museum (THM) was opened to the public in 1985 as part of the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition. It was created (and curated) by Prof John Widdowson in 1964 and was entirely run by volunteers and students. The THM housed collections including a replica kitchen from the 1920s, reconstructed workshops and retail shops, such as Pollard's tea and coffee. The university decided to close the Museum in 2011 because the building could not afford continued public access. In 2013, the collections from the Traditional Heritage Museum were relocated and are accessible again to the public. The majority of the items was transferred to not-for-profit organisation Green Estate (operators of the Sheffield Manor Lodge). Other major recipients include Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust, Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust and Ken Hawley Trust.
The Western Bank Library has an Exhibition Gallery. It is located on the mezzanine level of the library, enabling special collections from the university library and the National Fairground Archive to be displayed in controlled conditions. In 2010, the gallery was restored and refurbished by a grant from the Wolfson Foundation. The library usually schedules three temporary exhibitions per year, and most of the exhibitions are free to visit during library opening hours.
The Henry Clifton Sorby Collection contains glass lantern slides of marine organisms prepared and donated by Henry Clifton Sorby in the 1900s. Sorby was president of Firth College after the death of Mark Firth, vice-president of the University College of Sheffield, and a member of the Council of the University of Sheffield. His broad interests included marine biology, and he had developed a technique for preparing and mounting invertebrate …
