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A revised classification scheme has been created for use from now on. This is more generic and wide-ranging than the previous scheme and is designed to link largely objectively to a new database structure. There are 12 classes as follows for accessioned objects which together form the Core Collection:

• Audio
• Archives
• Components
• Data Comms
• Electrostatics
• ICT
• Radio
• Sensors
• Technical Support
• Telephony
• Television
• Video

Individual books, periodicals, manuals, films and recordings which provide data and information in the field of communications will continue to be collected. However, these data objects will not be accessioned unless, in individual cases, they were originally supplied in support of a communications object in the form of a user manual, a set of operating software or similar. In those cases they will be linked to and accessioned with the accessioned objects to which they refer. However, the vast majority of data objects will be held in the Supporting Data Collection which will not be accessioned.

Selected objects will be set aside for object handling purposes. They will be collectively designated as the Handling Collection and will not be accessioned.

While selected component objects will be held in the Components Class of accessioned objects, the large majority of individual components will be held in the non-accessioned Spares Collection.

Objects which are incomplete or in poor condition but are worthy of retention because they could be restored, or could be used to restore a similar object, will be held non-accessioned in the Incomplete Objects Collection.

In a limited number of cases, objects of a non electrical nature will be acquired. This is permitted so that the earlier stages of development of products, which have more recently been manufactured as electrical or electronic communication products, can be illustrated, In a similar vein, the limited collecting of objects which set the historical context of communications objects is also permitted. All such supporting’ objects are to be classified as Historical Support objects and will not be accessioned because they are not core collection objects.

In summary;

The Core Collection	Accessioned
The Supporting Data Collection	Non Accessioned
The Handling Collection	Non-Accessioned
The Spares Collection	Non-Accessioned
The Incomplete Objects Collection	Non-Accessioned
The Historical Support Collection	Non-Accessioned

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2014

Licence: CC BY-NC

Under the auspices of the town mayor, Helston had a museum briefly in the late 19th century, called Penberthy’s Museum that closed in 1893. Its contents were sold to Burton’s Old Curiosity Shop in neighbouring Falmouth. None of these objects constituted the current collection.

The current collection was constituted by the Helston branch of the Old Cornwall Society in the 1930s and included agricultural objects, relics of civic history including the Helston Railway, Cornish trades and occupations, archaeological artefacts, photographs and documents, numismatics, domestic items used for making, preserving, cooking and mending, Victorian textiles and dress, and items relating to Henry Trengrouse and his significant lifesaving inventions.

The idea for a museum to preserve material folk memories, especially of everyday activities that were beginning to fade in local communities followed the ruptures caused by the First World War (1914-18) and the impact of the increasing globalisation of Empire. The museum came to fruition in 1937 when the museum’s objects were systematically catalogued for the first time and the collection and project gained the financial backing of Helston Borough Council which took on its governance.

The development of the collections has not deviated from the initial pledge that the museum should be: “This is a folk museum and a local museum for the borough and the surrounding district. It exists for the collection of local things, especially ancient agricultural implements and such things as old coins, pictures and photographs of local scenes and events.” (Guide to Helston Borough Museum, c.1949. HESFM.1994.6465).

The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 caused the temporary hiatus of the museum. The collection went into storage and many items were distributed among townsfolk for safekeeping. In 1946 town’s old market buildings became vacant and the collection was transferred to its current venue as a dedicated museum.

In 1949, Helston Borough Museum opened in the old Butter and Egg Market building. The first curator, William ‘Bill’ Dalton, also the Landlord of the Beehive pub opposite the museum, continued to collect artefacts, mainly those relating to 19th and early 20th century Cornish social and cultural history. Natural history specimens including taxidermy and minerals, items relating to childhood, domestic technologies such as television, radio and music, and the contents of or inspired by defunct shops, and businesses began entering the collections. The geographic scope focused on Helston, the Lizard and south Kerrier district, however other items from across Cornwall were collected from the museum’s earliest days.

The collection expanded along similar lines throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Acquisitions were normally initiated by a member of the community, Old Cornwall Society, and through Bill Dalton’s network in the town and district. In 1974, following Local Government reorganisation, the collection and museum became the property of Kerrier District Council.

The collection was re-catalogued, partially illustrated or photographed, marked and documented according to ‘modern’ museum standards between 1977 and 1980 thanks to the Manpower job creation scheme. In 1980 Martin Matthews became the Council’s first paid Museum Officer and de facto curator. The 1980s to 1990s saw considerable redisplays and the expansion of the museum into the former Meat Market immediately adjacent to the Butter Market in 1983 and in 1999 into the Drill Hall, adjacent to the Meat Market. The collection expanded thematically and set-piece displays were built, for example, the Toyshop, the Victorian Classroom, the Serpentine Turner’s workshop, the 1950s corner shop and the Cornish kitchen; the costume collection expanded considerably in this period. The museum was rebranded as Helston Folk Museum in this period.

As part of the expansions, a small object store was established in the museum’s loft to house items not part of long-term displays. The majority of the object collection has always been on display. The major exception is photographs and framed items.

In 2002 Martin Matthews was succeeded by Janet Spargo as curator. The collection continued to expand in the early 2000 but the specific Cornish provenance of many items was not well-documented. A dedicated educational/handling collection was set up for the first time in the early 2000s and the catalogue began to be transferred to Modes, the museum collections management system.

In 2005 the collections of Camborne Museum, housed in the town’s library, were transferred to Helston. Camborne Museum was also under the auspices of Kerrier District Council and the decision to amalgamate the collections was intended to be temporary while a new home might be found. The collections comprised significant archaeology, notable ethnographic objects, mining material culture and extensive, unprovenanced mass produced ceramics.

In 2009 ownership of both collections passed from Kerrier District Council to the unitary authority Cornwall Council. At this point Melody Ryder had become curator. In 2012/13 the museum was threatened with closure as a new governance arrangement was being sought. In August 2013 South Kerrier Heritage Trust (SKHT) was constituted and took over the management of the museum and its collections under the curatorship of Katherine Ashton. In 2017, SKHT appointed the museum’s first director, Annette MacTavish.

The Museum rebranded in 2018 as the Museum of Cornish Life to more correctly reflect the breadth of geographies that the collection reflects, and its ambition to be relevant to people outside the immediate district. Limited and mostly well-provenanced collecting has taken place over the last decade to focus on expanding documentation, improving cataloguing and activating the collection through temporary exhibitions, loans and digitisation.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2023

Licence: CC BY-NC

The collections’ cultural value lies largely in documenting the late 19th to 20th-century social, cultural and economic histories of working class people in Cornwall including their domestic, cultural, sporting and vocational experiences.

Geographically the collection is centred in the Helston and South Kerrier region, but significantly also covers well-provenanced items related to everyday life in other parts of Cornwall.

Significant themes relating to the material culture of Cornish life (most important in bold):

• Farming, dairy and growing

• 20th-century social photography

• Working class costume and dress

• Domestic and religious material culture, 1850-1970

• Folk customs, especially Flora Day (aka Helston Furry Day)

• Folk art, performance and craft

• Toys, dolls and games, 1850-1970

• Shipwreck and lifesaving, inventions of Henry Trengrouse

• Distinctive mineralogy of the Lizard peninsula, especially zeolites and serpentine

• Neolithic and Bronze Age and Romano-British ceramics and stone artefacts, especially green stone axe heads.

Documentation

We estimate that there are up to 40,000 individual items in the collection.

21,118 items are currently documented to inventory level on the Modes collections management database. Many object records document groups, sets and sometimes entire deposits so an accurate total of items in the collection is not yet possible.

A minority of objects are documented to catalogue level and cataloguing items under our most significant themes will be one of our key priorities over the next five years.

A major process to retrospectively accession hundreds of photographs is near completion while the collection is digitised and catalogued. Previously, photographic accessions had escaped manual registration in Accession Registers.

Recent inventories suggest that about 20% of objects are not correctly marked with accession numbers and an ongoing process of retrospective inventory work has been prioritised, starting with the costume and farming collections. This will involve cross-referencing with the manual registers and checking against collections ex-Camborne Museum which used the same modern numbering system as Helston Museum.

Mass archaeological fragments in the form of assemblages of ceramic sherds and briquetage are principally undocumented.

Movement control has been lacking in the Museum practices over the last 20+years, compounded by the partial amalgamation of items ex-Camborne Museum.

Currently 1107 items are recorded with an ‘unknown location’ however we are confident from an inventory of our object store (Loft Store) and the systematic retrospective inventory programme since 2014, that items remain in the museum and are not completely missing. The job to update our catalogue is ongoing and since 2022 we have included object photography in inventory check routines.

We retain records of objects that went missing or were damaged when the museum was housed at its first site, and during the hiatus of World War 2. There was a significant theft in 1965 with no recoveries and Camborne Museum suffered a major theft in 1976 with no recoveries.

A review in 2023 confirmed that the Museum holds 9785 unprovenanced objects.

Loans

682 objects are on loan from private lenders, many of which have not been traced due to a lapses dating back to the 1960s. In 2018/19 a concerted effort was made to contact lenders to request a permanent transfer of title, however the majority of recipients had long ago moved on or had died without leaving details of next of kin. These have been recorded while a small number of significant items now in the ownership of SKHT. 360 objects belonged to the informal and unincorporated Friends of Helston Folk Museum set up to safeguard the collections against any threat of being sold off when the Museum changed governance from the local authority to SKHT. In 2023 the Friends informed SKHT and the Museum that the Friends had now been dissolved and these items could be formally taken under the ownership of the Trust.

Camborne Museum

There are 1128 items ex-Camborne Museum. The Camborne items have not been formally accessioned into the Museum’s collection, although some have been amalgamated in error. This collection was reviewed as part of a Headley Fellowship in 2022. The Museum will continue auditing and mapping the collection with a view to incorporating significant items into the permanent collection and documenting their provenance as ex-Camborne Museum. Throughout the Museum has been in touch with Camborne Town Council with a view to returning items to a new heritage centre should it succeed in being established.

Archives

Since its inception the museum has collected paper archives that should have been deposited at Cornwall Record Office – now Kresen Kernow. In 2017-18 a project took place to identify archival material that would be better stored at Kresen Kernow. An archivist reviewed the collection and created an inventory prior to a formal deposit in October 2022. The deposited items remain in the Museum’s collection but are stored and accessed by the public from Kresen Kernow.

Conservation and storage

The single biggest challenge for conserving the collection is the fluctuating environment of the historic, granite-built, uninsulated, poorly heated old market buildings. As a consequence, pests such as woodworm have been endemic, particularly affecting farming collections. An Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund-supported project is underway to address the problem before irretrievable losses occur, however the Museum is prepared that these may occur and a programme of archaeological-grade recording and photography is part of the conservation programme at hand. The small object store was thoroughly audited in 2022, ‘recovering’ many items thought to have gone missing. The store remains over-crowded and the Museum will not accept any large objects or those it cannot immediately make available for study, research, education or display.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2023

Licence: CC BY-NC

Science and Industry Collection

There is material relating to the history of tin, iron and copper mining in the area, with many tools, and working models of a tinners mill and a blowing house. Other industries represented in the collection are granite quarrying, peat working, glass and ice making.

Subjects

Science and Industry

Agriculture Collection

There is a collection of farming implements and equipment from Dartmoor farms.

Subjects

Agriculture

Geology Collection

There are examples of local minerals.

Subjects

Geology

Archaeology Collection

The medieval period is represented by material from the historic market town of Okehampton.

Subjects

Archaeology

Social History Collection

Most artefacts date from the Victorian and Edwardian periods and include domestic, trade and craft material, including blacksmith’s and wheelwright’s artefacts.

Subjects

Social History

Archives Collection

This large collection includes photographs of local personalities, events and topography; and archives and ephemera relating to the Dartmoor area.

Subjects

Archives

Other

Arms and Armour; Costume and Textile; Fine Art; Medals; Medicine; Music; Numismatics; Oral History; Personalia; Transport

Source: Cornucopia

Date: Not known, but before 2015

Licence: CC BY-NC

From 1988 objects were gathered together by Kirsten Hardie, from the Cultural and Historical Studies department of the then Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design as a teaching and learning resource. Initially these objects had a graphic design focus and were known as the Design Archive.

By 2001 the collection had grown sufficiently, with additions contributed by other members of staff, for it to become a Registered museum entitled the Design Collection Museum.

2003 saw a successful AHRB bid for funding to develop a project under the title ‘Plastics network’.

A review of the collection was carried out in 2006. This review demonstrated that there was considerable strength in objects made of plastics. As such, the decision was taken to focus on the plastics materials group.

On 1 September 2007 the name of the museum became the Museum of Design in Plastics (MoDiP). At the same time the term ‘Studio Collection’ was coined to describe the objects excluded from the Plastics Collection, mainly objects not made of plastics.

To strengthen the focus of the museum towards the Plastics Collection, a rationalisation programme was started in 2015. This programme will see the Studio Collection disposed in line with section 5 of this policy.

This strengthening of the Plastics Collection has seen the fulfilment of the museum’s ambition be awarded Designated Outstanding Collection status by Arts Council England.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2023

Licence: CC BY-NC

At the time of writing the collection consist of 11,608 objects, alongside the 3245 studio collection objects which are subject to the aforementioned rationalisation programme.

The museum defines plastics as materials that can be moulded into required shapes by the application of heat and /or pressure, whether thermosetting or thermoplastic. All plastics are polymers: materials made up of many smaller base units, different configurations making plastics with different properties. The collection includes natural, semi-synthetic and synthetic plastics.

The Plastics Collection includes two long term loans:

• A collection of 673 artefacts made of horn, a natural plastic, dating from the 17^th century to the present, on loan from the Worshipful Company of Horners.
• A collection of 450 plastic artefacts dating mainly from the first half of the 20^th century on loan from the Plastics Historical Society.

The collections include objects that fit into one or more of the following classifications:

• Animals and pets; including grooming equipment and saddles.
• Archival material; including photographs, brochures, and other printed material relating to industry.
• Audio visual; including radios, televisions, record players, tape recorders, personal stereos, records and picture discs.
• Artist or designer work; including work made by AUB students in response to the collection, and one-off or limited designer-maker pieces.
• Construction and building services; including fixtures and fittings, plumbing services and street furniture.
• Fashion and costume; including clothes, hats, footwear, hosiery, handbags and accessories.
• Health, care and grooming; including toothbrushes, glasses, razors and syringes.
• House and garden; including kitchen and tableware, furniture and furnishings, and lighting.
• MoDiP reference library; including books and journals relating to plastics design, manufacture, industry, and place in society.
• Office and workplace; including IT and office equipment, desk furniture and safety equipment.
• Packaging and materials handling; including carrier bags, food and drink packaging, and product packaging.
• Photographic; including movie and video cameras and associated photographic materials.
• Plastics and the environment; including products made from recycled plastics, and those designed to care for the environment.
• Plastics samples and industry; including sample swatches, and photographs relating to the Plastics Industry.
• Printed, written and drawn material; including magazines which include plastics related content.
• Promotional material; including objects designed to promote people, companies, and other products.
• Smoking; including cigarette lighters, ashtrays and match box containers.
• Sports, leisure and hobbies; including specialised equipment and clothing.
• Telecommunications; including telephones and phone cards.
• Textiles; including fabric, dressmaking and needlework, haberdashery, and knitting and crochet.
• Toys and games; including dolls, construction toys, creative play and puzzles.
• Travel and holiday; including transport, travel accessories, food and drink, and travel keepsake and ephemera.

Objects in the collection date predominantly from the 20^th and 21^st century and are especially strong post 1950.

The collections are international in remit.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2023

Licence: CC BY-NC

Decorative and Applied Art Collection

This is a large and wide ranging collection of East Asian art of major significance. It comprises: Chinese art; Korean, Thai, and Annamese ceramics; and Ordos bronzes and gilt bronzes from Inner Mongolia. The categories of Chinese art cover ceramics with a substantial collection representing almost all periods and types of bronzes, and metalwork of all kinds, gold, silver, cloisonne and enamels; lacquers, bamboo carvings, rhinos horn carvings, woods and natural wood sculptures, and miscellaneous decorative arts such as moulded gourds and toggles. There is a substantial collection of Chinese jades from neolithic times to the 19th century. There are artefacts relevant to an 18th century Chinese scholar’s studio, believed to be the only one of its kind in the UK. Japanese art includes ceramics, lacquers, netsuke, tsuba, and inro, and Tibetan art, chiefly gilt bronzes or gilt copper monk portrait figures and two examples of Derge work and a wooden vajra. There is also Buddhist sculpture. Particularly notable are the museum’s Ordos material, which is extensive; and its bamboo carvings, which, though few in number, are some of the finest of this category anywhere in the world. This collection is both the core collection of the museum and its main strength. It is an extremely important collection and in some aspects hold collections unrivalled elsewhere in a British museum. The collections are described as a strength and include archaeological, fine art, costume and arms and armour under this single heading.

Subjects

Ceramics; Metalwork; Jewellery; Sculpture; Furniture; Paintings; Decorative and Applied Arts; Glass; Fine Art; Prints; Drawings

Source: Cornucopia

Date: Not known, but before 2015

Licence: CC BY-NC

Social History Collection

This is the major strength of the museum with artefacts and records relating to the crafts of tinsmith, blacksmith, woodworker, shoemaker, hurdle-maker, thatcher, wheelwright and saddler; domestic life from the 18th century; local shops, trades and industries, particularly ironmongery and stationery (with over 300 unsold Victorian Valentine cards) and the collection from the Witchampton Paper Mills; material about local schools; local sports and leisure; public services and utilities such as health and welfare, police and the fire service; local government; and memorabilia about civilian life in the Second World War. Toys and dolls make up one of the most important aspects of the collection with some fine Victorian dolls and an early Steiff blank-button bear. 20th century material is actively collected. Coles Ironmongers and Low’s Stationers were both shops which formerly occupied the Priest’s House.

Subjects

Social History

Geology Collection

This small collection has mainly been collected by local enthusiasts and derives from Dorset.

Subjects

Geology

Medals Collection

There is a selection of commemorative medals. Schools medals feature strongly in this collection.

Subjects

Medals

Transport Collection

Human, horse-powered, motor-powered and rail transport are all represented in this small collection.

Subjects

Transport

Agriculture Collection

There are 19th and 20th century items on the themes of agriculture, livestock, dairying and animal husbandry. There is a good collection of horse brasses.

Subjects

Agriculture

Decorative and Applied Art Collection

There is a range of ceramics from the 18th century onwards and a good collection of commemorative ware representing royal events and Wimborne.

Subjects

Decorative and Applied Arts

Fine Art Collection

This collection comprises local prints, drawings and engravings and includes the 1950s work of local artist Richard Curtis.

Subjects

Fine Art

Archaeology Collection

There are local finds and excavated objects from various periods. Most notable are the archive and finds from excavations at Wimborne and from the Roman villa at Tarrant Hinton, which includes large amounts of painted wall plaster.

Subjects

Archaeology

Costume and Textile Collection

There are clothes and accessories from the 18th century to the present day, including 1950s items left over from Mr Dacombe’s, a local travelling salesman’s, stock. The Dorset buttons, fans and 26 samplers dating from 1787 to 1888 are of particular interest.

Subjects

Costume and Textile

Photographic Collection

There are many local images. The Coles family, who donated the original collections for the museum, gave photographic albums with images of Wimborne and surrounding villages as well as albums of family photographs. These form an important element of this collection, together with a collection of plate glass negatives taken by Sir Kaye le Fleming, a local historian, in the 1920s.

Subjects

Photography

Archives Collection

There is a large ephemera collection as well as archive material from the Second World War; local education material; and other papers and documents relating to other aspects of the museum’s collection.

Subjects

Archives

Other

Biology; Ethnography; Medicine; Music; Personalia; Arms and Armour; Oral history

Source: Cornucopia

Date: Not known, but before 2015

Licence: CC BY-NC

Like many Local Museums the collections of Enfield Museum have built up in a relatively ad hoc way. Originally the Borough had 2 museums – Broomfield House in Palmers Green, which housed the local and social history collections, including natural history artefacts and Forty Hall, where the decorative and fine art collections were stored and displayed.

Broomfield House, a Grade II* house with a Tudor core, developed as a Museum almost by accident. It had been purchased by the then Southgate Urban District Council in 1903 along with the park, but with no real idea of what it would be used for. Museum collections had been building up since the discovery of mammoth bones and teeth in the Palmers Green areas a few years previously. These had been lodged at Southgate Town hall with a view to displaying them at some point in the future. The publicity surrounding them seemed to encourage residents to donate other local history related artefacts and eventually it was decided that some of the downstairs room in Broomfield House would be turned into a Museum and the House was opened to the public in 1925.

The permanent displays of local and natural history and a full programme of temporary exhibitions were a very popular with visitors to the House, which also included a café and baby clinic. It was well loved and thought of by locals and is still remembered very fondly by older residents. It lasted until 1984 when the house suffered the first of several catastrophic fires. The collections were then put into storage in Forty Hall and eventually amalgamated with the rest of the, by then, LBE’s collections.

Forty Hall, a small Grade I listed Jacobean mansion was bought by Enfield Borough Council in 1951 from its last private owners, with the express intention of turning it into a Local Museum for Enfield. It was refurbished and opened in 1955. For quite a while, particularly in the 1960s and 70s, it could not really have been described as a local museum as it was largely a display of historic room settings augmented by displays of decorative and fine art objects from the collection. The then curator appears to have had a good budget for purchasing items and chose to buy good examples of both fine and decorative art, although not many of them had any particular relevance to Enfield.

From the mid-1980s Museum provision in the borough was centred on Forty Hall and many well-received exhibitions on local themes were held there. Despite threats to its very existence, this continued on and off until 2010 when the Hall was closed for refurbishment and the Museum was moved into the Dugdale Centre, a far more accessible building in Enfield Town Centre. Here a permanent Local History gallery and small art gallery are augmented by a temporary exhibition area, once again displaying local material in exhibitions on local themes.

The previous Museum Officer joined in 2002 and one of the first jobs was a complete examination of the collections to enable a plan for conservation to be drawn up and decisions to be made on where the gaps were and what type of material would continue to be collected.

Since the current Museum Officer joined in 2021, an emphasis has been placed on making the collection more relevant and representative of the diverse communities within the London Borough of Enfield.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2024

Licence: CC BY-NC

The collection contains approximately 20,000 artefacts which illustrate the local, social and political history of the people of the London Borough of Enfield (the geographical area has defined by the Local Government Act of 1963).

The collection dates from prehistoric to the borough today, and includes the following:

Social History

Includes items relating to community, domestic, family, personal and working life. The majority of the items date from the late Victorian period to the present day. The collection includes a quantity of costume consisting of male, female and children’s dress together with accessories, uniforms and civic regalia. The costume mainly dates from the 20th century but there are some notable items of women’s dress from the 19th century and an 18th century silk brocade gown.

There is also a good range of artefacts and material from the Second World War, acquired during and prior to the museum’s Enfield at War exhibition held in 2005, and mostly relating to the Home Front. Until 2019, social history items had been acquired in a similar way by being connected to a specific temporary exhibition – this has included First World War, wedding and sporting material. Since 2021, an emphasis has been put onto collecting social material that better represent the diverse communities of the borough.

Industrial History

These items are included in the social history collection and mainly consist of locally produced goods and items of social significance relating to the local industries in the borough. These include the type collection of valves from the Ediswan Factory, based in Ponders End, and a large collection of packaging items with a particular emphasis on items manufactured by the international ‘Metal Box Company’. There is also a small range of objects representative of the other world-renowned factories and industries, such as Belling and Matchbox, which were in the borough. The museum started collecting objects highlighting industry of today for its 2023 borough wide Enfield Industry exhibition, part of the ACE funded Festival of Industry project. However, there are still gaps in the collection, especially looking at the textile industry and working lives of people who came to the borough to work for the large factories.

Fine and Applied Art

The fine art collection consists of pictures in all media and has three main components: pictures featuring local landscapes or people; pictures by artists with strong local links to the borough, and a third, general category.

The applied art collection consists mostly of ceramics, glass, and furniture, with a few items in other plastic materials. There are significant holdings in 20th century ceramics.

Natural Science

The Museum of Enfield holds geological and natural history specimens including rocks and minerals, fossils and mounted animals, insects, and birds’ eggs collected during the Victorian period. Due to the unstable nature of most of this type of material and the difficulty in storing and conserving it, it has been decided not to add any more of this type of material to the collection.

Archaeology

Most of this material comes from excavations within the borough by the Enfield Archaeological Society. Items of note include a rare lead coffin and a glass flagon both from Roman excavations in the borough, and fragments of Elsyng Palace, a Royal residence dating from the 15th Century in the north of the borough. The collection is owned by the Society but cared for and stored by the museum.

Handling Collection

This consists of approximately 2,000 items of mainly unprovenanced material or objects, which have been offered to the museum and are duplicates of existing items in the main collection.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2024

Licence: CC BY-NC

Social History

Social history material found in, produced in, or closely associated with Farnham and its surrounding villages including the life of Farnham people, life during wartime, healthcare, local services, schools, shops and leisure activities and transport.

Geology

The museum has a modest geology collection of around 700 specimens.

Decorative/Applied Art

The decorative art collection includes Farnham Greenware produced at Wrecclesham Pottery at the height of its popularity in the first quarter of this century, that is of wider than local significance to students of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Farnham Greenware which was made at Harris’s Pottery in Wrecclesham until World War II. This pottery was a product of the Arts and Crafts movement and between the wars was sold by Heal’s, and Liberty’s of London.

Personalia

William Cobbett (1763-1835), and the less well known writer, George Sturt (1863-1927), were born and bred in Farnham and the collections include artefacts and papers relating to their life and works. Other local personalities reflected in the collections include local dignitary Charles Ernest Borelli (1873-1950) and Farnham motor racing hero, Mike Hawthorn.

Biology

There are over 4,000 natural history specimens of local and exotic origin.

Science and Industry

The collections record the development of Farnham along the old road from London to Winchester. Although Farnham had great strategic importance in the Middle Ages and the English Civil War, the traffic through Farnham did not significantly increase until the time of the turnpikes. Coaching inns and wheelwrights’ businesses sprung up everywhere. After local inventor John Henry Knight built the first petrol driven motor car in 1895, the town became a centre for motor car building. The collections contain many of John Henry Knight’s photographs and inventions, tools from George Sturt’s wheelwrights’ shop in East Street. There is also a small collection relating to the hops and brewing industry that once brought the town such prosperity.

Costume/Textiles

The Museum holds a good collection of costume and textiles including some notable examples of quilts and shawls, and female dress from the late 18th century to the present.

Archaeology

The Farnham area has been settled almost continuously since Palaeolithic times and the archaeological collections reflect this long and varied past. The particular strength of the archaeology collections is the huge quantity of flint tools, most of which were excavated in the first half of this century.

Fine Art

The Museum has a collection of fine art, representing the work of artists associated with the Farnham School of Art (now the Surrey Institute of Art and Design) since its foundation at the end of the 19th century. This collection also includes works of historic and topographical interest to the locality. There are works by local artist, Stephen Elmer (c1715 – 1796) who owned the house now occupied by the Museum and also by William Herbert Allen (1863-1943).

Photographic

The Museum holds a large photographic collection including some plates made by John Henry Knight, a pioneer in early colour and stereoscopic photography who belonged to a long standing Farnham family. The architectural heritage of the town and its environs is represented by an archive of photographs accumulated by architectural historian, Nigel Temple.

Archives

The architectural heritage of the town and its environs is represented by a substantial collection of drawings by the late 19th/early 20th century architect and artist Harold Falkner (1875-1963), and by plans for new buildings and building alterations carried out on prominent Farnham properties at the turn of the last century. Archives and maps relating to the local area are available for study.

Source: Cornucopia

Date: Not known, but before 2015

Licence: CC BY-NC

Porthcurno was the landfall site of the undersea cable connection to India in 1870. By the early 20th Century, it had become the biggest cable station in the world, linking Britain with its empire and the wider world through a network of 100,000 miles of cable. PK Porthcurno – Museum of Global Communications tells the story of our connected world, from the first experiments in telegraphy to the worldwide communications we all use today.

The museum has a comprehensive range of 19th and 20th Century telegraph equipment that relates to the operation and maintenance of undersea cable networks. These specialist instruments have international significance and includes equipment developed specifically for the Eastern Telegraph Company.
There are 400 items that form the original core collection at the museum. This collection was assembled by the cable operating companies from 1870, with provenance indicating that there was a ‘museum’ at Porthcurno in the 1890s and one at the Eastern Telegraph Company’s Head Office in London from the mid-1920s.

When the telegraph station at Porthcurno closed in 1970, one of the lecturers at the associated Engineering College saved old apparatus that was being discarded and used these to show his students how communications had evolved over the century. When the college itself closed in 1993, he and other volunteers set up a small museum in the World War Two Tunnels. The museum was officially opened in 1998.

This museum collection was later supplemented by artefacts from:

• The Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester
• National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh
• National Museum of Science and Industry, London
• The Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge
• The Danish Post and Telegraph Museum, Copenhagen

A further 250 items, formerly part of the General Post Office telegraphy collections, were transferred to PK Porthcurno from BT Heritage in 2008 providing important examples of equipment used in overland telegraph systems.

Other gifts have been made to the museum from companies and individuals associated with telecommunications. As well as artefacts, these include personal records of telegraph company employees, such as diaries, letters, and photograph albums.

In 2009, the museum was awarded Designated status from Arts Council England for its core collection of undersea telegraph objects and its historic archive, recognising them as outstanding, world-class collections.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2023

Licence: CC BY-NC

There are currently 4000 museum objects listed on the museum’s collection database.

The collections represent the specialist subject of global undersea communications from its origins in the mid-19th Century to modern day fibre optics. The subject is tied to the establishment and development of the telegraph station at Porthcurno which became the world’s largest cable station.

The main period covered by the collections is from the late 1860s to the 1970s. The range and extent of the collections provides a comprehensive overview of the development of the international communications industry focusing on the undersea cable networks, including details of key individuals and events. Other supporting collections relate to the invention and application of the inland telegraph from 1837.

The collections cover all aspects of cable telegraphy including development, cable laying and repair, operating the cables, testing and fault finding, and maintenance of the network.

The object collections at PK Porthcurno include:

• Grade II and II* listed historic buildings; the Cable Hut (1929), the Edwardian cable station (1904), and the World War Two Tunnels (1941).
• Parts of the original telegraph system and later developments as used at Porthcurno from 1870 onwards.
• Working exhibits demonstrating semi-automatic signal ‘regeneration’ in operation from 1925 onwards.
• Related collections of early electro-mechanical signalling and electric telegraphs from the 1840s onwards.
• Samples of telegraph cables from 1850 to 1950.
• Samples of telephone cables from 1940 to 1970.
• Samples of fibre optic cables from 1980 onwards.
• Models of cableships and other items relating to cable laying and maintenance from 1880 to 1980.
• Test equipment and fault location equipment used on the cable network from 1870.
• Phototelegraphy equipment.
• Scientific instruments and demonstration equipment.
• Related contextual communication equipment, including telephones and radio telegraphy/wireless.
• Specialist tools and maintenance equipment.
• Textile collections including telegraph uniforms, sportswear, and flags.
• Social history items, including tableware, sport trophies, ceramics, furniture, medals, and cap badges.

A collection of radio transmitters and receivers form a special exhibition in the Radio Room.  This collection consists mainly of marine radios and World War Two equipment with ancillary items.

Non-accessioned supporting collections include:

• Duplicates and spares, especially in relation to our working telegraph instruments.
• Items used for demonstration and display.
• Items used for educational purposes, including handling collections.
• Items made by museum volunteers for operational or demonstration purposes.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2023

Licence: CC BY-NC

Archaeology Collection

This archaeology collection is extremely strong. Highlights include the Bourton-on-the-Water hoard of bronze age socketed axes; the Birdlip grave-group of Celtic ornamented metalwork, of which the bronze mirror is extremely important; Roman sculptures from Gloucester, Lower Slaughter and Bisley which comprise on of the best series in Britain; the Roman Kingsholm warrior grave group of Visigothic silver; two Roman pottery kiln groups from Gloucester; and the Frocester goblet of engraved glass. The major items of later material are the Anglo-Saxon sculptures from St Oswald’s Priory; the Viking Tibberton enamelled stirrup; and medieval material including the Gloucester tables set, the oldest complete backgammon set in the world; the St Nicholas’ closing-ring of sculptured bronze and the Woodchester reliquary of sculptured lead. There is also an important collection of Roman military and personal items. The museum holds a comprehensive collection of finds from Gloucester, including the records of 25 major excavations covering 2000 years of occupation in the ancient city and its hinterland. There are also important collections from other sites in Gloucestershire such as Nympsfield long barrow; Bevan’s Quarry round barrow; Uley Bury hillfort; Birdlip iron age cemetery; Bourton-on-the-Water Roman town; Lower Slaughter Roman settlement; and Frocester and Boughspring Roman villas.

Subjects

Archaeology (industrial); Archaeology (cemeteries); Archaeology; Archaeology (settlement)

Decorative and Applied Art Collection

The decorative and applied art collection is of high artistic quality and its principal highlights are items from the period from Charles II to Victoria and the work of some outstanding Gloucestershire craftsmen. The decorative and applied art collection is strong and includes sculpture; pottery and porcelain; silver including work by William Corsely of Gloucester (1640-1691); glass; furniture; and clocks, watches and the finest provincial collection of barometers. This collection dates from Queen Anne to George III and includes works by outstanding Gloucestershire craftsmen, including William Simmonds. Further highlights include glass by James Giles, barometers by Daniel Quare and a 13th century Limoges Enamel Crozier.

Subjects

Ceramics; Metalwork; Sculpture; Furniture; Decorative and Applied Arts

Numismatics Collection

The coin collection is particularly strong, including Gold 7th century Thrymsa from Newent and coin dies of George III and medal master dies of George II This extensive collection includes the Roman coin hoards from Oldcroft and The Gloucester Cross, the Cross hoard being one of the largest found in Britain; medieval silver pennies from the mints of Gloucester, Berkeley and Winchcombe; Gloucestershire tokens of 17th, 18th and 19th century date; and Gloucestershire 19th century inn checks, 19th century traders’ checks, 18th to 20th century commemorative medals; and 13th to 19th century seals (casts and matrices). There are English coins from 7th to 20th century date; and three 17th century coin hoards from the county; 17th and 18th century coin weights and reckoning counters from 13th to 18th century date.

Subjects

Coins and Medals; Numismatics; Medals; Coins

Fine Art Collection

This collection contains some important works and it of high artistic quality. The main strengths are in landscape paintings; and the work of Gloucestershire artists. It includes oil and watercolour paintings; drawings; and fine art and topographical prints. Particular highlights include paintings by Phillip Wilson Steer, Richard Wilson, Walter Sickert, Adriaen Van de Werff and Ary de Vois.

Subjects

Fine Art

Geology Collection

The fossil collection is particularly strong, including Jurassic mammal teeth, Cetiosaur and Megalosaur bones and a complete Plesiosaur. This collection comprises 7000 British fossils, including 5000 brachiopods; British rock samples; and a world-wide collection of minerals. The collection comes from the important Jurassic site of Hornleasow.

Subjects

Fossils; Geology

Biology Collection

The biology collection is extensive and has a significance far greater than that of a county collection. The museum has a substantial herbarium of some 16000 specimens, including the archive of the Definitive Flora of Gloucestershire published in 1948. There are also British collections of beetles; butterflies; moths; other insect groups; birds and mammals; and land and freshwater molluscs. There is a worldwide collection of marine shells and a substantial collection of palaearctic birds’ eggs. There are several special collections within the biology collection including the Lloyd Baker, Clutterbuck, Greville Smith and Wild collections of birds, mammals and insects; and the Millard, St Brody, Montgomery, Butt, Riddelsdell and Haines herbaria.

Subjects

Mammals; Natural Sciences; Plants; Fish; Birds; Insects; Biology

Ethnography Collection

An historic collection of mainly stone artefacts from around the world.

Subjects

Ethnography

Source: Cornucopia

Date: Not known, but before 2015

Licence: CC BY-NC

The collection consists entirely of items of Islay interest, which began to be assembled by the islanders who founded the Museum in the 1970s. Significant donations in the first few years included several hundred relevant books and papers, followed by many objects from Islay House (the laird’s house) when the owners sold it and moved to a smaller home. In the mid-1980s over 2,500 colour slides taken on Islay by one photographer in the previous 15 years were donated. Significant individual donations have included the ship’s bell (in 2004) from HMS Tuscania (an American troopship torpedoed off Islay in February 1918); the Tuscania flag(a Stars and Stripes flag made by locals in 1918 for the funeral service and donated in 2018 by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC); an Islay police sergeant’s notebook (in 2013) in which are recorded the details of the hundreds of casualties from another troopship, HMS Otranto, sunk off the west coast in October 1918; a portrait of Donald Caskie (the Tartan Pimpernel), which was donated in 1978; and a fine 18th-century silver bow1 (donated in 2012) presented for the rescue of crew and salvage of cargo from a wreck.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2024

Licence: CC BY-NC

The collections consist of c.3,500 artefacts (from 12,000-year-old flints to the middle of the 20th century), 5,250 photographs (including colour slides, glass plate negatives, black and white prints, and postcards), c. 1,500 books and pamphlets, and an archive of c. 5,000 textual and photographic items including letters, greeting cards, reports etc. All of these items relate directly to the island and its people. A limited amount of written material is held digitally, and a systematic digitisation of the photograph collection was completed in 2021, with the colour slides and glass negatives completed and the black and white prints and postcards finished in 2023.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2024

Licence: CC BY-NC