Collection: Godalming Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  Godalming Museum collects material relating to the town and its associated villages. The collecting area extends beyond past and present town boundaries to include villages, hamlets and locations formerly or presently the responsibility of other municipal authorities. Godalming’s association with these places has an historical and geographical basis derived from traditional social, industrial, cultural and commercial connections. The collecting area of Godalming Museum is bounded approximately by:

  • To the north, a line including Peasmarsh, Compton and Puttenham
  • To the east, a line including Shalford, Bramley and Alfold
  • To the south, a line including Dunsfold, Chiddingfold and Hindhead
  • To the west, a line including Thursley, Elstead and Shackleford

  Natural History and Ethnography

  The Museum has a few natural history specimens and ethnographic items. For the most part these have been collected because of a link with a local individual (for instance a woven bowl from North Africa, collected by Gertrude Jekyll).

  Geology

  The Museum has a small collection of local and non-local material.

  Archaeology

  The Museum has a collection of archaeological material, the majority of it local. It ranges from single finds, through finds from early excavations to site archives deposited by present day Archaeological Units working in the area.

  Local History

  The Museum has a good collection of material relating to the lives and experience of local people, to local agriculture, industries and trades and illustrating the topography of the area. This collection includes items relating to local personalities such as the garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. It also includes works of art, which are collected primarily for the interest of their local connection, although consideration is also given to artistic merit. Reference books, ephemera, photographs and maps are made available to researchers through the Museum’s Local Studies Library. The collection includes digital copies of photographs and documents.

  Archives

  The Museum holds the significant Percy Woods Archive and an additional collection of other locally relevant material. The collection includes oral history which is stored digitally on computer and on audio CDs and transcribed into hard copy.

  Handling Collection

  The Museum has a small collection of duplicate, non-provenanced or non-local material which has been collected for handling within the Museum, for schools loans boxes and as spares and consumable working parts for machinery in the collections (eg the 19th century knitting machine).

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2024

  Licence: CC BY-NC