England’s Museums of the Odd

England’s latest rage among tourists is its offbeat museums, those that feature such esoteric subjects as the largest shoe in the world and the smallest needle ever made.

Here are several, all within a 40-mile radius of the Cotswolds:

--National Needle Museum/Forge Mill Museum, Redditch. In the 17th Century, Redditch was the world center of needle making. Forge Mill, the only water-driven needle mill in the world, dating to 1730, still works. Though the needle industry has moved to other towns, this museum preserves its history.

You begin upstairs with a historical video. A sign proclaims “Millions of Needles for Thousands of Uses,” and the curator says: “You should find in this top floor alone over 200 uses for needles.”

The displays include the biggest needle in the world, a six-foot one-inch mattress needle, as well as the smallest, one-third the size of a human hair and used in cataract operations. One case shows a tiny “space needle,” used by NASA in space shuttle construction. Other displays highlight hatpins, surgical needles and fishhooks, which were sub-specialties of the mill.

Downstairs are lifelike tableaux reenacting the steps of needle making, with buttons to push for spoken descriptions. A gift shop sells souvenir needle packets.

Outside the museum, a few hundred yards across the red earth from which Redditch gets its name, you can watch archeologists excavating the ruins of 12th-Century Bordesley Abbey, the largest Cistercian abbey site in Europe.

Needle Mill Lane, Redditch, Worcestershire B97 6RR. Open April through October, weekdays 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Saturday 1 to 5 p.m., Sunday 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; November to March, weekdays 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

--Teddy Bear Museum, Stratford-upon-Avon. Opened in July, 1988, this compact museum is set in a 16th-Century house in the center of town. As you wander its dim halls and rooms you come upon wall-to-wall teddy bears, photos, toys, bear-related artifacts and several large, detailed displays. There’s the teddy bears’ library, a large Victorian doll house filled with tiny bears and the teddy bears’ picnic.

Included are hundreds of teddy bears of all kinds and sizes, from 20 nations.

Assorted famous people have loaned their own teddy bears. There’s a photo of Margaret Thatcher’s teddy bear, and a display of bear books that includes a signed first edition of A. A. Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh.”

You enter the museum through a Teddy Bear Shop that seems to be selling everything with a bear connection (jewelry, baby clothing, puppets, tea towels, even honey). In one corner is a 10-foot-tall teddy bear.

19 Greenhill St., Stratford-on-Avon CV37 6LF. Open daily, 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

--Motor Museum, Stratford-on-Avon. This collection is gathered in a large building, formerly a school and chapel, with the words “Golden Age of Motoring” on its front. Inside is a varied assortment of Grand Touring Cars of the 1920s and ‘30s. Mannequins are dressed in styles of that era.

Displays offer such automobiles as a 1927 Type 35C Bugatti, a 1936 Bentley, a 1926 Rolls-Royce Phantom I, a child’s pedal car from 1905 and a 1912 Mercedes Tonneau-Phaeton, with three-foot-high tires with wooden spokes.

Equally noteworthy are the artifacts on the walls: a poster for “Clincher Non-skid Tyres,” petrol signs, motor and touring club emblems and extensive displays of headlights, radiators and license plates. A mechanical hand signal, complete with nail-polished hand attached, is labeled “for the fastidious Lady Driver of the 1930s.”

A shop offers British motoring books, both historical and current.

1 Shakespeare St., Stratford-on-Avon. Open daily, April to October, 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.; November to March, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

--Museum of Cider, Hereford. Housed in a former cider works, this museum tells the history of traditional cider making. Displays illustrate each step of the process. Outside you see an old horse-driven cider mill used for crushing apples before pressing. A 300-year-old Beam Press from Normandy is on display just inside.

Among the unusual items on the main floor are a collection of 18th-Century twist-stem cider glasses, some locally minted cider tokens used during the Napoleonic Wars and an 18th-Century recipe for English port. There’s an old farm cider house and a cooper’s shop.

Downstairs in the restored cider cellars are great oak vats and many tiers of bottles. There also are displays of hydraulic presses and machinery for washing, filling, corking and labeling the cider.

The gift shop sells all manner of goods associated with the apple and the pear.

21 Ryelands St., Hereford HR4 0LW. Parking and entrance in Pomona Place. Open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily, April to October; only open certain times November to March.

--Shoe Museum. This museum in the C & J Clark Factory contains an amazing array of footwear. Specimens include the world’s largest shoe, a size 53 Wallabee that’s 2 feet 3 inches long and 10 inches wide. In the entry room are displays of shoehorns, shoe hooks and shoes from various lands, along with shoe advertising post cards from 1928.

In the museum proper, large glass cases contain shoes and costumes from the Romans on. Moving from one to the next is like a trip in a time machine. Several display cases showcase artifacts from earlier methods of shoemaking, including hand-sewn and hand-tooled. The Gambadoes (1790) were open-sided, made of wood and iron and fixed to a saddle in place of stirrups.

One room is devoted to the industry of shoemaking in the town of Street. Other oddities include wooden-soled shoes produced during World War II and a model of the last made for Princess Diana’s wedding slipper in 1981. Throughout the museum are caricatures and engravings of shoemakers, as well as costume illustrations and fashion plates.

Downstairs a large room is filled with the machinery of shoemaking used from the 1860s to 1920, including cutting presses and sewing machines.

Don’t miss the impressive Henry Moore sculpture, Sheep Piece, just outside the factory and museum.

C & J Clark Factory, High Street, Street, Somerset. Open May through October, Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. During winter months by appointment only.

--Bath Postal Museum, Bath. The history of written communication through the ages is illustrated by two floors of carefully labeled displays. This museum is in the same building as Bath’s 1840 post office, where the world’s first postage stamp, the Penny Black, was posted on May 2, 1840.

Special features are a life-size model of a post office from 1840, and an activities room where visitors can try out wooden pens, Chinese brushes, quill pens and chalks. Oddities on display include a papyrus sample from Egyptian times, a letter from sculptor Benvenuto Cellini to Michelangelo dated 1561, a large model of a mail coach in use between 1750 and 1840 and Victorian Valentine cards.

Other artifacts on view include cancellation machines, early stamp albums, seals, letter openers and scales.

Upstairs rooms contain rotating displays, while the Bath Room illustrates Bath postal history.

8 Broad St., Bath, BA1 5LJ. Open all year, Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; April to October, also open Sunday 2 to 5 p.m. Closed Dec. 25-26, Jan. 1 and Good Friday.

--Museum of Marmalade, Oxford. For a change of pace from visiting the famous colleges scattered throughout this city, stop at the Frank Cooper Shop and Museum of Marmalade. Pick up the brochure that explains that marmalade originated in Scotland in the 18th Century. In 1874 Cooper began selling his wife’s marmalade from a shop at this same location. Visitors can buy Cooper products and related souvenir and gift items after a visit to the tiny one-room museum.

Displayed on the walls and in glass cases are a selection of 19th-Century pottery jars and a variety of artifacts and paper memorabilia relating to the history of the marmalade business in England. These include letters, photographs, early advertising brochures and accounting records.

Frank Cooper Shop and Museum of Marmalade, 84 High St., Oxford OX1 4BG. Open Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.