Collection: Market Lavington Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  The origins of the Market Lavington collection go back to the 1950s when Peggy Gye took an interest in the history of the parish. It was soon known that Peggy collected items with a relevance to the area and people brought things to her over the next 30 years or so. When the museum opened in 1985 it was Peggy’s personal collection that formed the bedrock of the museum. Peggy had collected many photographs, paper documents and clothes. There were items from shops and local businesses. Much of the material dated back to the Victorian and Edwardian era but there were some antiquities including fossils found locally.

  Since the museum opened more items have been added, particularly photographs and paper documents but also including items found by metal detectorists (after consultation with the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes – the local archaeology museum.)

  All museum artefacts have a record card which records not only what the objects are but also donor name and date of acquisition. In recent years this acquisition of items – all fitting our collection policy – has increased due to our presence on the World Wide Web. The closure of pubs in the parish has brought us some pub related artefacts. To summarise, our collection allows us to portray village life over the past 150 years, with some ability to look back further.

  We make a point of keeping current photographs, documents etc. These are in store for display in the future. We could, for example, produce a display on the way wedding orders of service have changed over the last 30 years.

  Whilst much of our main catalogue of photos was digitised (at 600pdi) several years ago, we are in the process of digitising more recently acquired photos and other non digitised photographs. Our digitised photos are stored on a computer and two external hard disks stored in different locations. The museum blog now has more than 2500 posts. The vast majority are about items in the museum and include photos and descriptions and also, where possible, personal tales to give human interest.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2019

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  The Museum’s collections number over 8000. The main categories are as follows:

  • Agriculture
  • Costume and textiles
  • Personalia
  • Domestic life
  • Recreation
  • Trade
  • Local societies
  • Photographs relating to local trades and businesses, village events, inhabitants and activities. The earliest photographs date back to c1870

  There is also a collection of objects and documents relating to the excavation of the Saxon burial ground in the village, on loan from Wessex Archaeology.

  Highlights of the collection include the photographs and the documents relating to village events and activities, such as Hospital Weeks.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2019

  Licence: CC BY-NC