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 familiarity.
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
PLACED · RETAINED · RECORDED · HELD OPEN
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PLACED · RETAINED · RECORDED · HELD OPEN PLACED · RETAINED · RECORDED · HELD OPEN ·
VISIT
Timed Keeper-led encounters, private visits and a limited programme of
artist-led days.
THE HOARDE GALLERY
A visual record of the figures, objects, rooms and records currently held by the museum.
FROM THE MUSEUM
Publications, cards, editions and small objects made to leave the museum.
THE KEEPER
The Hoarde is made, recorded and maintained by its Keeper.
WHAT THE PLACE STILL KNOWS
The Hoarde grew through walking the same fell paths, through the knowledge carried by T’Owd Man and the labour the records barely name.
It came through a preacher’s diary. Emigrant letters. Mining maps. A line in a census.
Rakes. Walls. Sheep smoots.
Hoar frost. Water. Grass. Stone.
Rag, fibre, wool, earth pigment and barytes brought another kind of knowledge. The materials warped, cracked, stained and resisted.
I made objects. I opened the Registers.
The museum appeared slowly.
CREATED AND KEPT BY DAWN HURTON
ONDawn Hurton is a contemporary artist and sculptor based in Cumbria. Her practice brings sculpture, text, moving image and artist-led environments together to investigate landscape knowledge, material knowledge and the ways 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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