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Social History Collection

The museum holds material relating to the civic history of Chard including the borough charter of 1684; information about the lace riots of 1842; civic regalia; artefacts relating to the Pouletts of Hinton St George (lords of the manor); and artefacts from both World Wars; photographs; local 19th century posters (many political); and banners. There are artefacts from local shops (fascia boards, photographs, counter items, coins and tokens); shoemakers tools; a cider press, a horse-powered apple crusher and barrels; milk roundman’s measures, butterpats, cream lead and yokes; a blacksmith’s double forge bellows reconstructed with a full set of tools; a carpenter’s workshop with tools; wheelwright’s tools; kitchen utensils; laundry equipment including a box mangle, hand mangles and early washing machines; sewing machines, some costume; artefacts from schools, toys, and a dolls house; pulpit, harmonium and other artefacts from South Chard Baptist Chapel; two biers, two funeral monuments and other items relating to the cemetery; cameras, typewriters and phonographs.

Subjects

Social History

Science and Industry Collection

The collection holds a range of material relating to a wide variety of different industries and crafts. For John Stringfellow, the inventor of the aeroplane, there are his lathe and tools, personal memorabilia, models of three planes and an engine, and photographs of his life and work. For James Gillingham, local maker of artificial limbs, there are a number of limbs, photographs and other artefacts. There is Hill’s plumbing collection as well as printing presses and examples of each local paper; Donyatt pottery; and George Webb clay pipes.

Subjects

Science and Industry

Agriculture Collection

The collection includes agricultural hand tools; farm machinery from Dening, Hockey and Smith with photographs; and other artefacts relating to Phoenix Engineering.

Subjects

Agriculture

Personalia Collection

Material relating to John Stringfellow, inventor of the aeroplane; James Gillingham, developer of artificial limbs; Margaret Bondfield, the first woman cabinet minister in Britain; Dr Fawcus and Frederick Vickery VC.

Subjects

Personalia

Transport Collection

Included in the collection are a 1946 car and full set of garage items of similar date; road and railway signs; seven wagons; a municipal hand cart; a donkey cart; and several sets of horse harness.

Subjects

Transport

Source: Cornucopia

Date: Not known, but before 2015

Licence: CC BY-NC

Personalia Collection

Printed and manuscript material by or about Charles Dickens, his work, his life, his circle and his times, by contemporaries or by Dickens scholars and students, objects once possessed by Dickens his family or his circle, paintings, prints and photographs of Dickens, members of his family or circle and of objects, buildings, and places associated with them, items designed to celebrate or commemorate Dickens and his work, items associated with the Dickens Fellowship and other organisations dedicated to his memory, and furnishings of his time suitable for the reconstructed rooms at Dickens House.

Source: Cornucopia

Date: Not known, but before 2015

Licence: CC BY-NC

Charleston, a vernacular Sussex farmhouse, was ‘discovered’ by Leonard and Virginia Woolf and became the country home of Virginia Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, her husband Clive Bell and Duncan Grant from 1916 until Vanessa Bell’s death in 1961, Clive Bell’s death in 1964 and Grant’s death in 1978. The two artists decorated the house deploying the same approach that they had pioneered at the Omega Workshops. For the next fifty years they continued to embellish it and collect around them fine and decorative art that reflected their life, work and friendships.

Charleston was frequently visited by all the members of the Bloomsbury circle as well as many major figures of the time including T.S. Eliot, Benjamin Britten and Ethel Smyth.

Significance

The Bloomsbury group is probably Britain’s most significant cultural grouping of the 20th century. The collection of writers, artists and intellectuals have a worldwide reputation and in Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes the group included two members widely held to be geniuses. As a group of friends, with no formal philosophy, their work is difficult to encapsulate. They were strongly influenced by the writings of the philosopher G.E. Moore. Though they differed among themselves, there was a common emphasis on honesty in personal relationships, and on tolerance, reason, freedom of speech, non-violence, equality, friendship and internationalism. The circle included the innovative biographer Lytton Strachey, the modernist writer Virginia Woolf, the socialist thinker and activist Leonard Woolf, the beguiling critic Desmond MacCarthy, the 20th century’s most important economist John Maynard Keynes and the art critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell.

In the visual arts Clive Bell and Roger Fry were influential critics. Fry organised two Post-Impressionist exhibitions in London in 1910 and 1912 and both Fry and Bell promoted progressive French art. The exhibitions had a significant influence on the art of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. This, and their experiments with abstraction (from as early as 1912), placed them in the vanguard of 20th century art. In 1913 Fry established the Omega Workshops with Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant as co-directors. Omega applied the Post-Impressionist style to domestic decoration and furnishing.

In 1916, during the First World War, Vanessa Bell, her two sons and Duncan Grant and his boyfriend David Garnett moved to Charleston. Bell and Grant soon set about redecorating the rooms. Charleston is the only complete surviving example of their decorative interiors, and is one of the most important artists’ houses in the world. In addition, it contains a rich collection of paintings and designs by Grant and Bell, and of paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and objects by artists such as Picasso, Derain, Sickert, Delacroix and others whose work they admired.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2024

Licence: CC BY-NC

Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Clive Bell occupied Charleston as tenants of the Firle Estate from 1916 until their respective deaths in 1961, 1964 and 1978. In 1981 the freehold for Charleston was purchased by The Charleston Trust.

The Charleston Trust was founded to restore and preserve Charleston and to provide public access to the house. It became a registered charity in 1981. The house opened to the public in 1986 after extensive restoration and conservation.

The collection comprises the house, its decorative interiors, contents, and permanent elements within the garden including walls, ponds, mosaics, and sculpture. Most of the contents and decorations of Charleston survived in situ up to the time of Duncan Grant’s death in 1978, after which various bequests somewhat depleted the collection. What remained was donated to the newly formed Trust by Vanessa Bell’s surviving children, Angelica Garnett and Quentin Bell. Additional gifts of family photographs and of studies and works on paper were made by Anne Olivier Bell in 2006 and by Angelica Garnett in 2008. With the exception of a small number of loaned works of art, the Charleston Trust owns the entire collection. The Trust continues to acquire relevant works for its collection which comply with the criteria of its collecting policy.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2024

Licence: CC BY-NC

The Museum’s aims flow from those of the Chasewater Light Railway Museum Company which, as defined in its Memorandum of Association are:

“To promote and to further the education of the public in the history of the railway and general transport heritage of the United Kingdom, with special reference to industrial and light railways and with special reference to the West Midlands area; by the creation and operation of museums of all types and, in furtherance of these objects but not otherwise, by the creation and operation of railways, tramways, or other forms of transport.

Within a museum or museums to commemorate the Cannock Chase and Wolverhampton Railway and other such railways operating in the West Midlands area.”

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2024

Licence: CC BY-NC

The Railway owns a significant quantity of railway and railway-related artefacts and archives. In addition to items owned by the Railway, the collections also include a small number (approximately 1% of the items) on loan from various members and other individuals.

The collections currently comprise the following:

• Items on permanent or long-term display
• Items on temporary or short-term display
• Items in the Museum stores unsuitable for display
• “Paper” items (accessed by prior arrangement only)
• Individually donated collections of personal items
• The Chasewater Light Railway & Museum Company archives.

As at September 2023, the collections comprised 9,115 items, with 8,255 accessioned and 159 items on loan.

Operational vintage locomotives and heritage rolling stock do not form part of the Railway’s museum collection. These items require continual maintenance and renewal of components to ensure their availability for the revenue-generating activities of the Railway in a manner which would be inconsistent with museum collection management principles.

A large number of small artefacts and various archival materials are associated with many and varied aspects of railway operation throughout and after the industrial revolution. While certain artefacts have a particular association with or relevance to the railways of the Cannock Chase Coalfield, others do not but are nevertheless important in the wider context of railway heritage.

The majority of the Railway’s artefacts and archives fall into one or more of the categories specified in the Memorandum of Association. However, the Memorandum is so drafted that virtually anything relating to railways falls, potentially, within the museum’s remit.

Although the Memorandum makes no specific reference to a period of time to which the collection shall relate, the Railway’s Museum Management Committee has agreed that the collection shall focus on items covering the period from 1850 up to 1948, the year of Nationalisation of the Railways, together with the ensuing period of transition.

The following list provides an indication of the types of items which form the greater part of the Railway’s collection:

• Advertising signs
• Uniform badges
• Boundary signs
• Bottles
• Bricks
• Buttons
• Carriage destination boards
• Cast iron signs
• Clocks
• Coats of Arms
• Crockery
• Framed pictures
• Furniture
• Guards’ Whistles
• Jigsaws
• Lamps
• Locomotive nameplates
• Locomotive whistles
• Locomotive Works Plates
• Maps
• Mining/colliery items
• Model locomotives
• Model carriages & wagons
• Pay tokens
• Permanent way tools & equipment
• Photographs
• Signal box signs & equipment
• Signalling equipment
• Station signs
• Stationery, incl. inkwells, pencils etc.
• Stoves
• Travel tickets, ticket punches

The following main line railway companies are represented in the collection:

• Barry Dock & Railways (BRY)
• British Railways (BR)
• Caledonian Rly (CR)
• Cambrian Railway (Cam.)
• Cannock Chase & W’ton Rly (CCWR)
• Cheshire Lines Committee (CLC)
• Ffestiniog Railway (Fest.)
• Furness Railway (Fur)
• Great Central Railway (GC)
• Great Eastern Railway (GE)
• Great Northern Railway (GN)
• Glasgow & South Western Rly (GSW)
• Great North of Scotland Railway (GNS)
• Great Western Railway (GWR)
• Highland Railway (HR)
• Isle of Man Railway (IMR)
• Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway (L&Y)
• London, Brighton & South Coast Rly (LB)
• London, Midland & Scottish Rly (LMS)
• London & North Eastern Rly (LNE)
• London & North Western Rly (LNW)
• London & South Western Rly (LSW)
• Mersey Railway (Mer)
• Metropolitan Railway (Met.)
• Manchester Sth Jn & Altrincham Ry
• Maryport & Carlisle Rly (M&C)
• Midland Railway (Mid.)
• North British Railway (NB)
• North Eastern Railway (NE)
• North Staffordshire Railway (NS)
• Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway (RE)
• Sheffield & Midland Rly Cos Cttee
• Somerset & Dorset Railway (SD)
• South Eastern & Chatham (SE)
• Southern Railway (SR)
• Stratford-on-Avon & Midland Jn Ry (SMJ)
• Taff Vale Railway (TV)
• Talyllyn Railway (Tal)
• Wirral Rly (WR)
• Windsor & Ascot Ry (W&A)

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2024

Licence: CC BY-NC

Local and Social History

The social history collections are wide ranging and include craft and trade tools, agricultural implements, domestic equipment, toys and games, costume, militaria and items that illustrate aspects of Fenland life, such as eel ‘glaiving’ (spearing), wildfowling with decoys and the netting of small birds. Of particular interest is the set of travelling stocks, made in 1774, once used on Market Hill, Chatteris and some 4 metre long bamboo poles used to collect money from upstairs windows during the annual ‘Hospital Sunday’ parades during the 19th century.; Small geological collection of variable quality, mainly local.; The archaeological collections span pre-history to post-medieval material, much of it acquired as a result of field walking. The Roman material is of particular interest. There is some carved stonework from the former Abbey of St Mary.; Photographs of people, places and events in the town of Chatteris and in the immediate area.; The collections include some books and documents from the local area.; There is an interesting collection of local Fen drainage tools, interpreting the history of land reclamation in the area, together with other local agricultural tools.

Source: Cornucopia

Date: Not known, but before 2015

Licence: CC BY-NC

Chertsey Museum first opened to the public in 1965 as a voluntary run museum located on the first floor of the Old Town Hall in London Street. The original collections consisted of Chertsey Abbey floor tiles, Cypriot, Mycenaean and South Italian Greek pottery, furniture, local watercolours and photographs and some ethnographic material, all of which belonged to the Chertsey Urban District Council, plus material bequeathed by Mr. J. Tulk. This consisted of pottery, clocks and furniture. In addition to these collections, much material was donated by local individuals when it became known that a museum was being formed. Some of this material was of a non-local nature.

In 1969 the first professional Curator was appointed, and CM was offered the Olive Matthews collection of costume and accessories on long-term loan. However, the existing building was inadequate both in terms of storage and display of such a substantial collection. In 1970 the Trustees of the Olive Matthews Trust (OMT) purchased the present Museum building, The Cedars in Windsor Street, a grade 2 listed Regency Town House with an attractive rear garden. In 1972 OMT entered into an agreement with the Chertsey Urban District Council, allowing the display of both the Council’s and the OMT collections. The new Museum opened to the public in the same year.

As a result of local government re-organisation in 1974, the Chertsey Urban District Council and the Egham Urban District Council were amalgamated forming Runnymede Borough Council (RBC). RBC operates CM under the powers of the Public Libraries and Museums Act, 1964. Today, CM is managed as part of the Community Development Business Centre with the Community Development Committee of the Council as its governing body.

CM has built up a strong core of local public support, including the press and some local businesses. The Friends of Chertsey Museum was launched in 1994 to help raise the profile of CM locally, to help generate funds and to promote and support CM’s activities.

In May 2002 the museum relocated to temporary premises whilst The Cedars underwent a major refurbishment project, with the building of a new multi-purpose extension and the installation of a platform lift. For the first time Chertsey Museum has flat access throughout. The Museum re-opened at The Cedars in July 2003.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2022

Licence: CC BY-NC

The collections in total consist of approximately 24,400 objects. These are largely held at CM and off-site stores, or on display in The Cedars. Existing collection areas are outlined below:

The Tulk Bequest (60 items)

This collection of clocks, furniture and miscellaneous items were bequeathed by Mr J Tulk in 1962.

The Runnymede Borough Collection (approximately 15,000 items)

This collection consists mostly of material evidence related to the history of the Borough of Runnymede and environs. It includes; a horology collection of regional significance with local makers such as James Douglass and Henry Wale Cartwright represented; topographical paintings, prints and works on paper in addition to portraits of local civic and historic figures associated with the Borough, by artists including Robert Gallon, William Daniell and Joseph Farrington; archaeology from the Thames Valley of national significance, such as a Viking sword by the German maker Ulfberht and a Bronze Age socketed axe complete with wooden handle, the only one of its kind in Europe; medieval tiles and stone work from Chertsey Abbey; a geology collection of prehistoric animal bones and antlers from the Thames Valley; social history, including material relating to the Chertsey foundries, and documents and maps relating to the local area; and a collection of ancient Greek pottery.

The Olive Matthews Collection of Costume & accessories & Decorative Arts (approximately 8,300 items)

This collection is on long term loan from the Olive Matthews Trust who oversees its care and administration. The core of the collection is a group of costumes and accessories, ceramics, silver, furniture and clocks originally belonging to the late Miss Olive Matthews of Virginia Water. The costume collection consists of high quality fashionable English clothing from the period 1700 to the present, with one important item from the 17th century, an embroidered gentleman’s cap dating from between 1600 and 1610. Much of the material was acquired by Miss Matthews from the Old Caledonian Market in North London before 1939 and more rarely at auction sales. OMT’s remit allows it to seek significant additions to supplement the existing collection. This long-term loan collection was renewed for another 30 years in 2002.

The Oliver Collection (approximately 1,200 items)

This collection is on long term loan from the Oliver Trust, set up in 1985 to oversee the care and administration of the collection of Sydney Oliver of Egham, an antiques dealer, valuer and local historian. The collection consists of paintings and prints, photographs, ephemera, clocks and social history objects, many of local significance but also including non-local material. A 10-year loan agreement for this collection was originally entered into by RBC and OT in 1986. The loan was reviewed in 1994 and as a result was extended for a further 10 years to run from December 1996. The collection is currently under review, in consultation with OT, as part of the process of rationalisation.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2022

Licence: CC BY-NC