Collection: Museum of Hartlepool

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Cornucopia)

  Archaeology

  The Archaeology collection is large and growing to include material form the district. The Saxon and medieval are considered to be of regional significance.

  Archaeology (prehistory)

  Hartlepool Arts and Museums Service holds a small but significant collection of material, principally from the Hartlepool area. The main part of the collection is stone tools resulting from local excavations at sites such as Middle Warren. Highlights include material from the Hartlepool submerged forest, which includes faunal remains, waterlogged wood and the remains of a wattle fish trap. Also in the collection is material from the Romano-British settlement at Catcote, including flints, worked stone, human bone and pottery.

  Ancient Egyptian Collection

  The Hartlepool Arts and Museum Service holds 160 ancient Egyptian objects. Classes of objects represented in the collection include: coffin; jewellery; metal figures; human remains (mummies, foot only); musical instrument (bell); scarabs; shabtis; stone figures; textiles; tomb models; tools/weapons; wooden figures. Objects are known to have come from the following location in Egypt (with the name of the excavator/sponsor and year of excavation given): Anteopolis (Petrie with the British School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1923).

  Subjects

  Antiquities; Ancient civilizations; Antiquity; Archaeological sites; Archaeological objects; Egyptology; Archaeological excavations

  Industrial history

  The Industrial collections reflect the heavy engineering, iron and steel, shipbuilding, timber, railway, salt and other industries of the district.

  Social History

  The Social History collection consists of domestic items, ephemera, a small costume collection and war time material, in particular the World War 1 bombardment, ranging over the past 200 years relating to everyday life in Hartlepool and district. The collection principally consists of printed ephemera from the Robert (John?) Wood Collection of photographs, maps and printed books.

  Ethnography

  The Ethnographic collections were acquired mainly between 1920 and 1930, but Mr W Lauder donated Islamic ceramics, Japanese armour and netsuke, items from India and China and shell money from Polynesia. Colonel Thomlinson donated items from Africa, the Ear East and India. The collection is 141 items including 77 from Asia, 4 from Latin and Central America with 2 Pre-Columbian items and 2 ethnographic, 9 from North America, 41 from Africa, especially West Africa, 6 from Oceania and 4 unknown.

  Maritime

  The maritime collection, mainly post 1850 in date, ranges from personalia to the ‘PSS Wingfield Castle’ and includes plans and drawings from the town’s shipyards, especially William Grey and Co which includes hundreds of ship plans, builders and sailor made models, instruments, tools and small craft and there is a related photographic and ephemera collection and maps and charts. There is earlier material excavated from a medieval harbour comprising 3 fish hooks and reused timbers. The collection of artefacts is numerically dominated by ship models and by hand tools from boatbuilding and machine hand tools from shipbuilding. Large objects include 2 traditional wooden boats ‘Three brothers Grant’ and ‘Viking’, a tender and the optic from the Heugh Lighthouse. The collections relate to shipbuilding and repair, marine engineering, fishing industry, dock and port services, support services and the social history of the people working and living in the area.

  Natural Science

  The Natural History collections comprise a comprehensive collection of 405 mainly mounted British birds and common mammals; 870 birds eggs with little data; 9,000 British Lepidoptera; 35 osteology specimens, 10 fish spirit specimens; 110 timber samples; 5,000 molluscs; wax models; 40 polyzoa mounted on sheets and 200 herbarium specimens of seaweeds from Hartlepool(1890s) and plants from Northern England (1950s).e.g. Miss H Withy bequeathed Avian mounts; Miss R Withy donated Marine Algae and Marine and Freshwater Mollusca and their father Henry also donated marine algae and molluscs all in 1920. Mr E Wilson collected 1950-1960 British Birds Eggs and donated in 1963. West Haven Marine Observatory, purchased from in Oct 1973 Pisces, Mollusca and Crustacea. Capt. D Wiley donated Birds eggs world wide in March 1928. Mrs Weatherall donated 9 cases of Bird mounts in ? Mr Tozer donated minerals and fossils in 1969; Mrs M Tighe donated world wide mammal mounts in March 1939; Mr JT Taylor donated marine algae and coelenterates in 1920: Sunderland Museum donated Bird mounts, Bird eggs and Japanese Lepidoptera in 1909 and 1920; Mr Salmon bequeathed British Birds eggs in 1972; Mr Harold Motherdale donated British Birds Eggs in 1928; Mr John O Mennear donated minerals, rocks and fossils in 1986; Mr P Kitchen purchased from British Lepidoptera and Coleoptera in 1922; Maj TA Jobson donated British Birds Eggs in 1922; Mt Iveson donated British Birds eggs in Jan 1953; Mt Sidney Hogg donated 21 mounted birds in 1920; Mr Hall donated British Lepidoptera and British birds eggs in Sept 1933; Mr Groves donated British birds mounts in Feb 1930; Sir William Creswell Grey donated 283 cases and 51 mounts of bids world wide in 1921, 1926 and 1930; Mrs M Gibb donated British marine and freshwater mollusca in May 1933; Mr R Fawcett donated Mollusca in June 1928; Col. H Doughty donated British bird mounts, foreign Bird eggs, and mounted British mammals in May 1925; Cerebos Salt Co donated minerals July 1930; Mr Carter donated German and British insect in May 1971; Miss A Berkley donated 137 cases of mounted British birds, 18 mounts of world wide mammals, and 7 osteological specimens of world wide mammals in July 1938; Mr F Appelyard donated Porifera from Holy Island in Sept 1921; The geology collections are local and include the Dr David Woolacott (1872-1924) minerals, rocks and fossils donated in 1920.

  Source: Cornucopia

  Date: Not known, but before 2015

  Licence: CC BY-NC