Board of Trustees

The Museum of Bath at Work is operated by Bath Industrial Heritage Trust Ltd, a registered charity and company limited by guarantee. There are currently eight Trustees who are the Directors of the company, and one salaried employee, the Museum Director.

Edward Cross

Edward is a qualified Mechanical Engineer and has worked for the last 30 years at Bath-based family firm Cross Manufacturing Co (1938) Ltd which makes specialised metallic seals and retaining rings for the Aerospace, Automotive and Power Generation Industries worldwide. He has been a Director of the firm since 1999, which now has factories on three sites in the South West with over 500 employees. He was introduced to the Museum of Bath at Work by his late father, Michael Cross, who had been instrumental in helping to establish the Museum and who chaired it in the early days. Edward has been a Trustee of the Museum since 1995.

Ann Cullis (Company Secretary)

Ann started her career as a lecturer in art history and then worked in the voluntary sector as office manager for a small business. For over twenty years she worked as a manager in local government (in Swindon and then in Bath), working in arts development, tourism, outdoor events, and economic development. Her experience includes procurement, contract management, advice & business support to voluntary sector organisations, and health & safety risk assessment.

In 2014-19 she devised and led the extensive programme of World War 1 Centenary commemorations for Bath & North East Somerset Council, wrote the accompanying souvenir publication (2018), and has worked as a curator and producer of events. She is a member of Bath Writers & Artists Group, a director of Friends of Bath Jewish Burial Ground CIC, volunteers with the American Museum & Gardens, and is a Bath BID ‘welcome ambassador’.

Ann loves researching her 19th and 20th century family history, which features numerous small business people in varied industries including three pubs, an Eating-House (working men’s dining rooms), tin-plate manufacturing, coal merchant, chemist & druggist, a connection by marriage to Moreland’s ‘England’s Glory’ matches, and a music hall variety entertainer. The wealth of trades that are displayed in the Museum of Bath at Work make her feel right at home.

Dr Sara Frears

Sara has been a Trustee of the Museum since 2011, but has been involved for much longer.  Her father Russell Frears was one of the founders of the Museum and it has been a part of her life since its inception in 1978.

She trained as a Zoologist in Aberystwyth and Aberdeen and subsequently held research posts in Aberdeen and Pretoria, South Africa.  She was a Teaching Fellow at the University of Otago, Dunedin until the birth of her twins in 1998.  Returning to the UK, she worked on a house renovation in Bristol and had another baby; these responsibilities were the focus of her work over the next 10 years.  In 2010 she trained as a teaching assistant and has been employed as a Museum Educator in Bristol City Museums developing and delivering museum based learning to school pupils since 2013.

From 2014-2021 she worked as a Family Support Practitioner, initially based in a South Bristol school, latterly at East Bristol Children’s Centres, specialising in working with families who have experienced domestic abuse.  Sara has been a school governor for many years and is currently the Chair at Ashton Park Secondary School.  She sings in a choir, plays the piano, loves gardening, walking (especially with a dog), baking bread, and continues to support her adult children as they make their way in the world.

Professor (Emerita) June Hannam, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

June has been a trustee of the Museum of Bath at Work since 2018.  She taught history for over 30 years at the University of the West of England where she was at various times Head of History, Professor of Modern History and Associate Dean Research.  Her PhD (Sheffield) was on ‘women’s work in Leeds, 1880-1914’ and she has published widely on socialism and feminism in Britain.  Her most recent publications include a pamphlet for Bristol Radical History on Mabel Tothill, Feminist, Socialist, Pacifist (2019) and a co-edited book (with June Purvis) The British Women’s Suffrage Campaign. National and International Perspectives (Routledge, 2021).  

Since retirement June has been keen to encourage interest in labour history and women’s history in the South West.  This led her to become involved in the Museum of Bath at Work.  She is also co-organiser of the Larkhall History Society, Co-chair of the West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network, and a Patron of the Cleveland Pools project.  She is on the editorial board of Women’s History Review and of Llafur, the Welsh Labour History Journal. 

Euel Lane

Born in Broad Street in the centre of Bath, Euel spent long periods of his childhood in and out of hospital and says he had very haphazard schooling. He joined the Civil Service in London and spent six years in the service, passing his one and only exam. When he returned to Bath he got what was to be a temporary job with Bristol Omnibus Co. which turned into 35 years as a bus conductor, driver, coach driver, and tour guide.

Euel was then appointed to the Board of Directors of the First South West and Wales Pension Scheme. He was responsible for his local area, Bath, Bristol, Weston-super-Mare and Wells, visiting depots and giving advice to employees on pensions options and early retirement, and reporting to the Board on ill health requests and deaths in service.

During his spare time Euel joined classes at the Technical College (now Bath College) on history and architecture related subjects and also passed the qualification to be a Mayor’s Guide. Noticing that Euel’s home had a shelf full of books on industrial archaeology, Stuart Burroughs the Museum Director invited him to volunteer at the Museum when he took early retirement in 2003.

Professor Ann Sumner

Ann is an art historian, curator, former museum director and museum consultant, as well as an academic researcher who publishes and lectures regularly.  She is passionate about audience engagement with a particular interest in the arts and industry, and co-authored the Joseph Wright of Derby Project: Creating a Centre of Excellence, for Derby Museums Trust in 2018 and the Bringing out the Best Public Engagement Report From the Community for the Community focusing on the proposal for a new art gallery in Huddersfield for Kirklees Council in 2021 and the Stronger Futures report for Gawthorpe Textiles Collection also in 2021.

Born and educated in Bath, Ann has held curatorial positions at the National Portrait Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Harewood House Trust and the Holburne Museum.  In 2000 she became Head of Fine Art at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, becoming Director of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham and Barber Professor of Fine Art and Curatorial Practice in 2007, and the first Director of Birmingham Museums Trust in 2012.  From 2014-17 she headed up the Public Art Project at the University of Leeds, as Head of Cultural Engagement,  and ran the Yorkshire Year of the Textile project 2016-17 inspired by the county’s rich textile heritage.  In 2018 she was made a Fellow of Aberystwyth University.  She is currently Visiting Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University where she leads the research on the American sculptor Mitzi Cunliffe who lived there in the 1950s, and has recently published a new book on Cunliffe’s post war sculpture in Britain and links to ceramic and textile industries.

Ann is Chair of the Methodist Modern Art Collection, is a Trustee of Leeds Art Fund, and sits on the Advisory Committee of the School of Art, Aberystwyth University.  She is Chair of the Fundraising Sub-Committee.

Dr Trevor Turpin (Chair)

Trevor studied economics at the University of Bath where he was inspired and introduced to Industrial Archaeology by Angus Buchanan. On graduation in 1971, and after a season as a stage carpenter at Liverpool Playhouse, he worked in local and central government followed by 11 years managing river pollution of the Bristol Avon. He took a Masters in Environmental Pollution Control at Manchester and then worked as an environmental consultant for 30 years, and led EIA infrastructure projects throughout the UK and abroad.

Trevor was elected to the Board of the Institute of Environmental Assessment and served on the Professional Standards Committee for several years. For three years he was Associate Director of Studies for the MSc in Environmental Management by distance learning at the University of Bath. He co-authored the well regarded Environmental Impact Assessment Handbook, now in its 3rd edition.

Having studied Arts, Design and the History of Technology with the Open University he then researched the approach of engineers to environmental design of dams for his doctorate at Manchester. This led to his book Dam, and he has written several booklets for the Museum of Bath at Work including on the Bath-based Horstmann engineering family. He prepared an exhibition on the Forgotten Rivers of London through Literature for his MA in Literature and Landscape at Bath Spa University and curated the exhibition at the Museum in 2017 on Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s connection to Bath.

Trevor has an eclectic range of interests: a season ticket holder with Charlton Athletic, a 50-year passion for restoring and campaigning vintage and classic cars, and grows dahlias and hopes one day to have his efforts recognised by the village show judges.

Trevor was invited to join the Trustees of the Museum by Russell Frears in 2007 and is Chair of Bath Industrial Heritage Trust Ltd.

Geoff Wallis, C.Eng. MIMech.E

Whilst training as an apprentice at Rolls Royce Aero Engines in Bristol and studying Engineering at the University of Bath, Geoff worked as a volunteer restoring the Crofton steam pumps in Wiltshire. This completely changed his perception of engineering, so he abandoned the aircraft industry and joined a newly-founded company, Dorothea Restoration Engineers Ltd, offering a new service, ‘restoration engineering’. He carried out repairs to historic machinery, traditional wind and watermills, and architectural metalwork, serving as director for over 30 years, latterly as MD. He felt privileged to carry out major projects on high-profile sites for Historic England, the National Trust, Historic Royal Palaces, museums and local authorities throughout the UK and abroad.

Geoff became a chartered engineer in 1987 and retired from the company in 2007 to become a consultant carrying out conservation surveys, project-planning, and contract supervision. He acts as tutor at several British universities, and is Course Leader in Architectural and Structural Metalwork Conservation at West Dean College near Chichester. He has delivered conservation craft training widely in the UK, and in Myanmar, Zanzibar and India.

Geoff is a past president of the Newcomen Society for the Study of The History of Technology, and of the Bristol Industrial Archaeology Society. He is a trustee of the National Heritage Ironwork Group https://nhig.org.uk/, and serves on the Council of the Association for Industrial Archaeology. Together with his wife, he established the Bulgarian Partners Trust which has raised significant sums to support humanitarian work in that country.

Stuart Burroughs, Museum Director

Born and brought up in Bath, Stuart started his career in museums with roles at Glyn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea; Bristol Industrial Museum, Bristol; Lackham Agricultural Collection, Lacock; the Roman Baths Museum, Bath; and the Museum of Bath Stone, Box, before taking up the Directorship at the Museum of Bath at Work in 1992.  With degrees from the University of Wales in History and the University of Leicester in Museum Studies, his interests in the commercial development of Bath have overlapped with his professional career in museums and he is an author, a regular lecturer, and a respected local historian.

He has contributed to History Today, The Newcomen Society, and is author of The World’s Cranemakers: Stothert & Pitt (1996), The Best for the Most with the Least: Bath and the Council House (2013), and co-authored Workhouse to Hospital with John Payne (2020).

Stuart is Chairman of the Bristol Industrial Archaeological Society, Curatorial advisor to museums in Somerset and Bath, and “an enthusiastic amateur film maker, a competent church bellringer and an amateurish musician”.