{"id":386548,"date":"2026-01-03T23:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T23:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/386548\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T23:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T23:35:12","slug":"museum-steps-in-as-wallace-and-gromit-mania-grips-preston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/386548\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum steps in as Wallace and Gromit mania grips Preston"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BBCBBC<\/p>\n

Wallace and Gromit fans have been braving the winter weather to queue for the exhibition <\/p>\n

A museum has been forced to restrict access to a Wallace and Gromit exhibition after visitors were left queuing for hours due to a surge in popularity over the Christmas holidays.<\/p>\n

Queues of hundreds have been forming outside the Harris Museum in Preston, Lancashire, for a chance to see original sets and models from the animated stop-motion franchise by Aardman Animations.<\/p>\n

The recent boom in visitor numbers led the museum to stop anyone joining the lines from 13:00 GMT each day until the exhibition shuts on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Morgan Clossick, who works at the museum, said the unprecedented demand had “just carried on each day, it’s brilliant”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The exhibition opened at the end of September but has witnessed a spike in festive interest<\/p>\n

The Harris Museum was itself reopened by Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park<\/a> in his hometown earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Storyboards, sketches from Aardman’s archives and workshops are on display in the “A Case at the Museum” exhibition, which will move on to London after 4 January.<\/p>\n

Mr Clossick said he thought the surge in demand was caused by people looking for a fun distraction over the Christmas break.<\/p>\n

He said the first queues began to form on Monday. <\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Morgan Clossick said everyone was in “good spirits” despite queuing in the cold <\/p>\n

He said it was “a bit of a shock walking out the door” to see the queues first amassing.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s just the snowball effect of people saying ‘oh let’s go and have a look’, and then we’ve had multiple days where people have been like ‘we didn’t expect a queue like this’.<\/p>\n

“Everyone’s in good spirits and everyone’s just waiting their turn at this point.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Once inside, museum goers can explore the Lancashire upbringing of Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BBC Wallace and Gromit fans have been braving the winter weather to queue for the exhibition A museum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-386548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}