Collection: St Albans Museums

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  St Albans Museums consists of two museums, St Albans Museum + Gallery and Verulamium Museum. St Albans Museum + Gallery opened in 2018 in the old St Albans Town Hall. It is the successor to the Museum of St Albans which was established in 1898 as the Hertfordshire County Museum.

  St Albans Museum + Gallery’s collections reflect the social history of St Albans, the Natural History of Hertfordshire and also include the Salaman Collection of Trade Tools, which is nationally significant.

  The Verulamium Museum was established as the site museum of Iron Age and Roman Verulamium during the 1930s, following the archaeological excavations by Mortimer and Tessa Wheeler. It holds most of the excavated material discovered in the City and District of St Albans.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2023

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  The museum collection is owned by St Albans Museums Service, as part of St Albans City and District Council. The existing collections, and policies for their future development, are described in more detail below. In summary, the main elements are:

  • the residue of Sir John Evans’ archaeological collections originally placed in the Hertfordshire County Museum [later Museum of St Albans].
  • small quantities of local prehistoric archaeological material.
  • Late Iron Age and Roman archaeological finds from Verulamium and its hinterland within the City & District boundaries, an area of approximately 200 km². The most significant finds are Late Iron Age burial, cemeteries, coinage and pottery, Roman mosaics and wall plasters, burials, and everyday objects from a type Romano-British town.
  • the in situ Roman mosaic in Verulamium Park.
  • Archaeological material from the Late Saxon and later monastic and market town of St Albans.
  • the fifteenth-century town belfry, the only example in Britain, with its original great bell.
  • ruins of Sir Richard Lee’s house on the site of Sopwell Nunnery, St Albans.
  • social history collections from the post-medieval thoroughfare, market, and commuter town of St Albans.
  • Hertfordshire-wide maps, prints, watercolours and drawings from the Lewis Evans collection, including comprehensive material for St Albans to 1900.
  • an extensive twentieth-century photographic record of St Albans & District, and nineteenth and twentieth century local ephemera.
  • English trade tools of the period 1700-1950 comprising the Salaman Collection, an important partially published collection.
  • the residue of geological, palaeontological, and natural history collections (now a closed collection).

  Archaeology

  The Museum Service’s archaeological material is largely housed at the Verulamium Museum and at Sandridge Gate Business Centre and forms the bulk of the current collections. The Verulamium Museum was founded in 1939. Initially the collections were those from the excavations conducted by the Wheelers within the Roman Town. These have subsequently been added to by further excavations and the inclusion of the archaeological collections from the Hertfordshire County Museum.

  Prehistoric

  The collection under-represents all prehistoric material, particularly prior to the Late Iron Age. Similarly, little is known of the location of sites.

  Roman

  This is the strongest area of the collections. The Verulamium collections are of national importance though there are recognisable gaps in the area of ‘luxury’ items. Although Verulamium is one of the best known Roman towns in Britain we still know relatively little about its hinterland and this is reflected in the collections.

  Saxon

  The Museums’ collections are very weak in all material of this period (perhaps reflecting its material culture or its true extent). We still have limited knowledge of the immediate post-Roman history of Verulamium, the founding of the Abbey and the early origins of St Albans.

  Medieval

  Excavations within the medieval town have provided a considerable amount of data in terms of collected material. There is still a need to locate and explore the pre-twelfth century town. Excavations at the Abbey have provided a considerable body of material from the religious centre. Our knowledge of the hinterland of St Albans is still very weak.

  Foreign Material (closed collection)

  The collections include small assemblages of material from Ireland, and from Egypt, Cyprus and other Mediterranean areas. These objects were acquired from the Hertfordshire County Museum in 1955 having been collected by past residents of St Albans.

  Natural Sciences

  Introduction

  The Museums Service’s Natural Sciences collections are housed at the Sandridge Gate Depot Store. The Natural Science Collections are largely ‘historic’ in nature, the majority of the material being derived from the and the collecting activities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Substantial purchases were made, for example, as late as the 1940’s for educational purposes but no large and/or important groups have been given to the Museum in recent years. More recent donations have been largely of individual items. Field collecting has ceased.

  British Vertebrates (closed collection)

  The current vertebrate collection consists of 300 mounted specimens and associated field material, 200 microscope preparations of vertebrate histology, 200 fish in spirit and 1200 birds eggs. There is little documentation associated with these collections, which are mostly ‘historic’ in nature. There is also a small collection of osteological material.

  Invertebrates (closed collection)

  The current collections consist of 17,500 lepidoptera (including important regional and national collections) 5,000 other insects (including the important Victorian county collections) and 5,000 mollusca.

  Botany (closed collection)

  Although a large section of the vascular plant herbarium (including most of the county flora of 1832) was destroyed in the 1950s much important material is still extant. The County herbarium function passed to during the 1950s. Collections of bryophytes, fungi and other non vascular cryptograms have been transferred to North Hertfordshire Museum Service.

  Earth Sciences

  The petrology, mineralogy and palaeontology collections comprise: a representative collection of major British rock types and local building stones; a small collection of minerals, many of them unprovenanced; and a good collection of fossils representing the local Chalk and Pleistocene deposits, together with characteristic non-local British material of all periods.

  Social and local history

  The Museum Service’s social history section is based in St Albans Museum + Gallery with outlying stores at SADC Depot, Sandridge Road. The social history section is responsible for both social and local history as well as fine and decorative arts. The current collections contain the following elements:

  Hertfordshire County Museum 1898-1956

  As the first Museum in the County, a very wide range of material relating to the whole of the County of Hertfordshire and not merely St Albans was collected. Much of the material is unprovenanced, and many other items have, been passed on to the appropriate museum within the County since 1956. Where material forms part of a discrete collection this has been maintained intact (e.g. Lewis Evans Collection). The main body of the collections include a number of small groups of material such as:

  • Hodgson Collection of silver spoons (closed collection)
  • Curtis Collection of fans (closed collection)
  • Lewis Evans Collection of books, pocket compasses and music staves (closed collection)
  • Lewis Evans collections of maps, prints and drawings
  • Evan Roberts Collection of watches (closed collection)

  St Albans City Museum 1956-1989

  The most significant addition to the collections during this period was the purchase of the Salaman Collection of trade tools in 1969.

  Museum of St Albans 1989–2018

  The policy of the Museum of St Albans will be to collect material of local provenance, i.e. items used or made within the City and District of St Albans.

  St Albans Museum + Gallery 2018 – present

  The policy of St Albans Museum + Gallery will be to collect material of local provenance, i.e. items used or made within the City and District of St Albans.

  Local Trades and Industry

  The collections are particularly weak in this area. There is, for example, little material from the brick makers noted by Dickens in Bernards Heath, coats made by Nicholson’s of Hatfield Road and shoes from the Lees factory. In general twentieth century industry from the City is under-represented.

  Costume

  The collection of costume has grown haphazardly and although it contains some fine items is not representative of the everyday wear of any particular period or class.

  Dolls and Toys

  The collections range from dolls of the eighteenth century but include few items with a local provenance.

  Farm Vehicles and Implements (closed collection)

  The collections include a number of large agricultural vehicles which cannot be displayed at present. The Salaman Collection contains many agricultural hand tools. Other agricultural collections are slight: photographs, reminiscence, costume and printed ephemera.

  Furniture

  The collection of furniture includes items from the civic past of the City, but local domestic items are poorly represented.

  Decorative Arts

  In metalwork, ceramics and glass the Service holds small, but representative collections of general interest rather than of local relevance.

  Maps, prints, drawings, and paintings

  The Service holds a particularly fine collection of maps, prints, and drawings relating to the County and acquired/collected by the curators of the Hertfordshire County Museum. St Albans and surrounding settlements are particularly well represented though not completely comprehensive, even in maps and prints. The collections date from the eighteenth century onwards but there is a lack of post-1920 material. There are few oil paintings and works by locally significant artists, the result of the concerns of the County Museum.

  Numismatics

  The Museum has a good collection of Hertfordshire Trade Tokens but is not comprehensive in St Albans material.

  Photographs

  The collection includes substantial amounts of photographic material relating to St Albans in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Collecting during recent years has filled many gaps, but there remains little before 1880, or for the wider district.

  Other Printed Material

  The Museum has a wide collection of ephemera, with particular strengths in political posters from c. 1840, theatre bills, chap books, mourning cards, WWII official notices etc. There is also a collection of bound copies of various local newspapers covering the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

  Residues of transferred collections (closed collections)

  The collections of Arms and Armour are a legacy the Ball Collection held by the Hertfordshire County Museum from the 1920s until the 1950s. Although withdrawn by the 1950s the collection had attracted other local donations.

  Ethnographic material previously held has been passed to Ipswich Museums’ Ethnology Department, though some items have been retained as representing St Albans citizens’ past activities such as campaigns in India.

  Hertfordshire Regimental items have mostly been passed to Hitchin Museum.

  Salaman Collection of trade tools

  This is the most important single group of objects in the history collections, and was purchased from Raphael Salaman in 1969. It was assembled by trade rather than by locality and is drawn from all over the country. The collection is therefore national in scope and importance. Salaman used the collection, and other material, as the basis for his Dictionary of Woodworking Tools 1975, and Dictionary of Leatherworking Tools 1986, where many of the more significant items in the collection are illustrated.

  Film

  The Museum Service has very limited collections of moving image material made in, or depicting, St Albans. There is no comprehensive list of such material, whether in private or public ownership.

  Twentieth century collecting and contemporary recording

  The collections of post-1930 material have been augmented by recent collecting. The Museum Service has devoted considerable time to recording change within St Albans over the past 15 years, resulting in exhibitions on Food, Domestic Interiors and the Home Front. But much more remains to be done.

  Building Records

  The Museums Service holds the results of photographic building surveys of St Albans City Centre and similar surveys are held by the Planning Department.

  Education collection

  The Museums Service recognises the public demand for, and educational potential of, objects which can be freely handled and examined in the museum. Specially collected material, and selected objects from the accessioned collections cover most periods outlined in the History National Curriculum and can be used as recommended elements in English, Geography, etc. Replica material is used where appropriate.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2023

  Licence: CC BY-NC