Collection: Berwick Museum and Art Gallery

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Cornucopia)

  Archaeology (prehistory)

  Significant collection of material principally from Northumberland. Highlights include Neolithic pottery from Thirlings, near Ewart, Bronze Age pottery from Eglingham and carved stone from Weetwood and Fowberry.

  Maritime

  Majority of items are local salmon fishery and include a Tweed salmon coble and fording box, ropemaking machine, navigation lights, a small group of ship and boat models and the Fairmile ship plans dating from the 1950s and 60s.

  Ethnography

  Mainly recent material from North Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, the Near East including excellent Turkish embroidery, the Levant, Central Asia, South East Asia, Arctic with a small Inuit collection of carvings donated mid 20thcentury, Central America, the Balkans and some stone tools from Polynesia, bowling game with disc stones (ulumaika) from Hawaii; 20 pieces of cloth from Solomon Islands, shield, 2 spears and grass skirt and bowl in the shape of a fish.

  Natural Science

  Dr George Johnston (1797-1855) and Dr Robert Charles Embleton (1806-177) two of the Founders of the Berwickshire Naturalists Field Club formed the original museum collection qv (Natural Science Collections of the North East, 1986), of which little survives, but there are 2000 molluscs, mainly foreign with some British marines and terrestrials; 4 spirit specimens; c130 British and foreign Lepidoptera; c35 birds eggs; Herbarium of c. 240 mosses from Scotland and N. England collected by Duncan and a bound volume of New Zealand ferns; miscellaneous corals, sponges and crustacea and B N F C library of c. 1500 items including back copies of the Proceedings and illustrated Transactions of the Society, manuscript material especially the Hardy correspondence on loan to the museum. Moss Collection is nationally important. 19th century papers on the sponges in the collection published. Berwickshire Naturalists Society Library.

  Subjects

  Natural History; Ornithology; Science

  Source: Cornucopia

  Date: Not known, but before 2015

  Licence: CC BY-NC