Stoke Bruerne Canal Museum

Learn about the Grand Union Canal, its construction challenges and engineering feats, and how the canals fuelled the industrial revolution. We bring to life the stories of the everyday people, who lived and worked on the canals and made up a unique waterway society.

You’ll find working models of historic narrowboats, barges and butties, displays of boaters’ belongings, a re-created boatbuilder’s workshop and films of canal days gone by.

Meet our museum narrow boat ‘Sculptor’, moored up outside the museum. Built in 1935, Sculptor is one of just a few historic working boats that still lives on the canal. Originally owned by the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company, Sculptor was used to carry a variety of cargo, such as cotton and coal.

You’ll find the museum at the top of the locks when you visit Stoke Bruerne, in a restored corn mill at the end of a row of canal cottages.

One of the first canal museums in the country, The Canal Museum opened in 1963, Today, The Canal Museum at Stoke Bruerne is still home to part of the Canal & River Trust wider ‘museum collection’.