Qualla: National Museum of Costume

National Museum of Costume: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Sutcliffe, CC BY-SA 2.0. The library set is dated to 31 December 1952. Father, mother, and daughter are dressed for the Dumfries Chamber of Commerce Hogmanay Ball at the Assembly Rooms. The daughter's gown is black machine-made cotton lace over taffeta, decorated with sequins and beaded festoons and pink nylon 'horsehair' rosettes with pearlised edges, sewn by the Cruikshank Salon on Princes Street in Edinburgh. Across the hall, the drawing room is set in May 1945, with a family gathered around the wireless to hear the war news, the hostess in a printed rayon dress bearing the wartime Utility label. Every room in Shambellie House is a year preserved.

Image: Richard Sutcliffe | CC BY-SA 2.0

National Museum of Costume: A House Built for One Family

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian Greig, CC BY-SA 2.0. Shambellie House sits at the south edge of New Abbey, with views toward the ruins of Sweetheart Abbey and the bulk of Criffel rising 1,870 feet above the Solway plain. It was designed by the Scottish architect David Bryce in 1856 for the Stewart family - a Victorian country house...

Image: Ian Greig | CC BY-SA 2.0

National Museum of Costume: Rooms as Scenes

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rosser1954 Roger Griffith, Public domain. The museum opened in 1982 and took a deliberately theatrical approach. Each room was furnished with appropriate period pieces and staged as a single moment in time. The dining room set a summer evening party in 1895, with the butler arranging glasses on a sideboard built by Alexa...

Image: Rosser1954 Roger Griffith | Public domain

National Museum of Costume: Make Do and Mend

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Barton, CC BY-SA 2.0. What gave the museum its emotional weight was how clearly it showed the ordinary economics of getting dressed. The granddaughter's red velvet evening dress in the bedroom set was made in 1943 - cut from an adult's clothing because wartime rationing left no new fabric to spare. Th...

Image: Jim Barton | CC BY-SA 2.0

National Museum of Costume: A Century in Cloth

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Neal, CC BY-SA 2.0. Shambellie's permanent gallery traced the changes in silhouette across a hundred years: the whalebone crinolines that peaked around 1860, layered under flounced petticoats of brocade and taffeta; the bustles that came into fashion in the 1870s; the princess line of the 1880s, wit...

Image: Peter Neal | CC BY-SA 2.0

National Museum of Costume: Closure

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Neal, CC BY-SA 2.0. In January 2013, National Museums Scotland announced that the costume museum would close. The decision was framed as a consequence of the economic recession - declining visitor numbers and the long aftermath of the 2008 crash made keeping a small rural site viable difficult. The ...

Image: Peter Neal | CC BY-SA 2.0