Shropshire Magazine

Stella Mitchell at the Land of Lost Content in Craven Arms.

Andy Richardson stops off at Craven Arms and finds the essence of bygone ages encapsulated in an astonishing collection

Stella Mitchell remembers exactly where she was when she began her life’s work. “I was eight,” she says. “I was at a jumble sale with my mother, Col.”

Stella spied a box of Victorian cartes-de-visite. The photographs showed men with handlebar moustaches, women with elaborate dresses and others with stern expressions. “The album was being sold for a shilling,” says Stella. “I asked my mother if I could have the money to buy it. My collecting instinct probably goes back even earlier. But that was the first occasion when I can remember doing something to deliberately conserve the past.

Stella relaxes ’50s-style in this re-creation on a suburban living room of more than half a century ago.

“My mother had no idea why I wanted the photographs. But I remember thinking ‘If I don’t look after them, what will happen to them?’.”

Stella is among Shropshire’s foremost collectors. Her museum, The Land Of Lost Content, occupies a rambling building in Craven Arms and is a treasure trove of 20th-century memorabilia and ephemera, with literally hundreds of thousands of artefacts. There are posters, clothes, records, pictures, oddments and more. 

“I think things represent people’s lives,” adds Stella. “That’s why it’s so important that they are kept.”

Read the full story of The Land of Lost Content in the May 2009 print version of The Shropshire Magazine, available at outlets throughout the county.