Collection: Trowbridge Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Cornucopia)

  Social History Collection

  The museum has an extensive collection of artefacts relating to the social and local history of Trowbridge, including the Whitaker collection of social and domestic items. The collection of machinery and artefacts related to the town’s important textile industry, although counted with this collection, is described under a science and industry collection heading. -Family and Domestic Life, Education, Childhood, Fashion.

  Subjects

  Social History

  Geology Collection

  This is the Crabbe collection of fossils, there is also a herbaria. This collection relates to the poet George Crabbe, Rector of Trowbridge from 1814-1832.

  Subjects

  Geology

  Fine Art Collection

  There is the Garlick collection of topographical prints and drawings, given to the town by Herbert Garlick in 1932.

  Subjects

  Fine Art

  Personalia Collection

  There is material relating to Sir Isaac Pitman, Trowbridge’s most famous citizen. His form of shorthand has become accepted as the best method of writing rapidly. A weaver’s son, he was born in Naish’s Yard, Trowbridge in 1813, published his first book on shorthand at the age of 24, was knighted in 1894 and died three years later. There is also material relating to Abraham Bowyer, born in South Wraxall in 1793. He began a business selling home-cured bacon, opening a factory in the 1840s. The company he founded, Bowyers, is now a national meat processing business.

  Subjects

  Personalia

  Science and Industry Collection

  The local woollen cloth industry is well represented in this collection which includes a rare early spinning jenny used in Trowbridge; a carding machine; a spinning mule; a Dobcross power loom; a fulling machine and teasel gig; a shearing frame; and a pair of large shears. There is also a hand loom from a weaver’s cottage. There is a significant collection of textile machinery, tools, woollen cloth samples and other material relating to the local woollen cloth industry. The woollen trade in the west country reached its peak between 1845 and 1875, when Trowbridge was known as ‘the Manchester of the West’. In the 1850s, 12 mills operated in the town.

  Subjects

  Industry and commerce; Textile manufacture; Science and Industry

  Archaeology Collection

  This collection comprises the finds from the medieval Trowbridge Castle and from excavation of a clay pipe kiln.

  Subjects

  Archaeology

  Costume and Textile Collection

  There is the Taylor collection of materials from a Trowbridge drapery shop. The collection includes shop fittings and fixtures.

  Subjects

  Costume and Textile

  Archives Collection

  There is the Lansdown collection of printed ephemera.

  Subjects

  Archives

  Other

  Subjects

  Agriculture; Arms and Armour; Medals; Music; Oral history; Photographs; Transport

  Source: Cornucopia

  Date: Not known, but before 2015

  Licence: CC BY-NC