Collection: Kingston Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Cornucopia)

  Muybridge Collection

  Kingston Museum holds a very large collection of the photographic work of Eadward Muybridge (1830-1904), who experimented with using photography to record movement. On display at the museum you can see the original Zoopraxiscope moving image projector, Muybridge’s binunial lantern with which he delivered his famous lecture tours on the Attitudes of animals in motion, a rare panorama of San Francisco (1878) and assorted packing crates and ephemera. At the Local History Research Library in the North Kingston Centre on Richmond Road, is the reserve collection (viewable by appointment) of Muybridge’s lantern slides, zoopraxiscope discs, prints and a newspaper cutting book which Muybridge kept of his career and achievements.

  Local History Collection

  This collection includes a wide range of material from prehistoric times to the present; archives, museum and local studies collections are managed as one department. These collections include flint artefacts from the Thames, bronze weaponry dating from 900BC, Roman coins and a Saxon human burial, 14th century boat timbers from the Thames waterfront at Kingston, a medieval kiln reconstruction, the Corporation’s weights and measures, Borough regalia and Borough Archives from 1208 onwards, a half scale model of Turk’s Boatyard interior, material from the East Surrey Regiment, products and other material from local industries, a penny farthing and a boneshaker, clothing and domestic items, local books and directories, maps, newspapers, photographs and paintings of historic Kingston, New Malden and Surbiton and taped reminiscences.

  Numismatics Collection

  Kingston Museum has an impressive collection of local seventeenth century traders’ tokens on display in its permanent galleries. Sixteen of these were part of an important country-wide collection owned by a private collector and were purchased in 1996 with the help of the National Art Collections Fund. Kingston suffered badly during the Civil Wars; its bridge over the Thames made it strategically important and it changed allegiance between Royalist armies and the Parliamentarian army four times. Serious shortages of supplies resulted and even small change was in short supply. 17 local traders issued 21 different tokens, square as well as round. Charming images displayed on the tokens include a crane (a bird) and three coneys (rabbits), indicating the inn signs from which two traders operated. A number display three fishes from Kingston’s coat of arms or coats of arms of trading guilds. The tokens were a big success and though illegal were tolerated until 1672 , when Charles II banned them and official coins were issued in larger numbers. The following tradesmen are represented in the collection: Edward Buldwin, Henry Male, Stephen Hubbard, Stephen Feilder and James Levitt.

  Source: Cornucopia

  Date: Not known, but before 2015

  Licence: CC BY-NC