Collection: Bishop’s Stortford Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Cornucopia)

  Personalia

  The Rhodes Collection includes military uniform, his dress clothes, school blazers, flags and cloths including material relating to Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) and to Sir Herbert Taylor (1865-1943) and books on Rhodesia and Africa from the collections Mr Hugh Marshall, a former colonial officer in Northern Rhodesia, and other donors. The collection of the former Rhodes museum, which were acquired in 1938, include various pieces of furniture, household effects and memorabilia associated with the life and times of Cecil Rhodes, including portraits of Rhodes and his associates. Items were also donated which had belonged to his brother, Frank, to Louisa Rhodes and to his father Rev. Francis Rhodes. Personal items include watches, clocks, prayer books, walking sticks and cigarette case. The ethnographic collections include basketwork, beadwork, woodcarving, tools and weaponry, musical instruments, masks and domestic art from many countries across sub-Saharan Africa. Portraits, watercolours, etchings and a collection of watercolours detailing Rhodesian flowers by Agnes Strickland.; The Rhodes collection includes an archive of images from Southern Africa from the mid 19th century, Rhodes family portraits and views of Bishops Stortford. Also postcards of local views, Rhodes House and African views. There is a small collection concerning mining and geology in southern Africa.

  Local and Social History

  The museum holds collections of domestic items including household equipment, tools, tins, needlework items, china and glass and toys and games, sports and recreations such as cinema and theatre programmes. Local trades and industries are represented by carpentry handtools, shoemaking tools and accessories, bricks and brickmaking tools, plumbing tools and accessories, measures, shop fittings and signs relating to local trades and printing machinery and items from other local industries. The museum has a small collection of agricultural hand tools. There is a small collection of local costume mainly Victorian/Edwardian. There is a small collection of local archaeology, both stray finds and material from local digs, including pottery and other artefacts, a stone coffin and skeleton, plaster panels and timber sections. The collection includes local history documents, printed ephemera and the archive of Sir Walter Gilbey. The museums local collections include about 630 photographs of local views and people and about 200 postcards.

  Archives

  The major local history archive is that of Sir Walter Gilbey, and contains personal correspondence, documents of the W and A Gilbey Wine Co and the family connections. The Rhodes collection includes letters, official documents, wills, birth certificates, newspapers and journals, books and printed material such as histories of southern Africa, Rhodes biographies, maps, albums, programmes and catalogues. The collection includes newspapers letters, books photographs and other items belonging to Sir Herbert Taylor (1865-1943) Chief Native Commissioner, Matabeleland, 1895-1913, Chief Native Commissioner, Southern Rhodesia 1913-28.

  Source: Cornucopia

  Date: Not known, but before 2015

  Licence: CC BY-NC