Collection: Saffron Walden Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  The collections are owned by Saffron Walden Museum Society Ltd, UK registered charity 1123209, which founded the Museum in the 1830s to house its collections (then known as the Saffron Walden Natural History Society). Society members were local gentlemen of learned interests and far-flung contacts, allowing them to acquire collections from all over the world, notably in ethnography and the natural sciences, as well as closer to home. Pre-eminent among the Museum’s founders were John Player, a retired civil servant from the Admiralty, and Jabez Gibson, a member of a prominent local Quaker family of brewers and bankers. Later nineteenth century collectors continued to enrich the Museum, such as George Stacey Gibson’s herbaria and fossil collections, Joseph Clarke’s collection of antiquities and the fine collections of ceramics and glass made by William Tuke (another Quaker family of note) and Dr Henry Stear. Until the 1880s members of the Society curated the collections but in 1880 the first professional curator, George Nathan Maynard, was appointed. The Society continued to run the Museum directly, with the aid of grants from various sources, until 1974, when the newly established Uttlesford District Council took over the operation of the Museum Service. Saffron Walden Museum Society leases the Museum collections and buildings to Uttlesford District Council under a joint management agreement (revised 2004, 2009 and 2014). Under this agreement, the Museum Service’s governing body is the Museum Management Working Group, a joint committee of representatives from Saffron Walden Museum Society Ltd and Uttlesford District Council.

  The collections of Saffron Walden Museum, estimated to be about 170,000 objects and specimens, have been developed since 1832. Initially collecting was widespread, reflecting the diverse interests and contacts of the Society membership, and covered natural and human history from around the world, as well as objects and specimens local to north west Essex. Many of the Museum’s most important ethnographic items were collected in its early decades.

  In the twentieth century, the rise of social history and archaeology as museum disciplines and the disposal of many of the older exotic animal mounted specimens in the early 1960s led to a greater focus on the immediate district (now Uttlesford). That process of refining and targeting collecting continues in the twenty-first century. The Museum must also balance the demands placed by developments such as Stansted Airport, which are producing large volumes of archaeological material, with finite resources. The off-site store and subsequent adjustments to the Museum buildings will set a finite spatial limit on sustainable collecting for the foreseeable future.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2019

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  The scope of the collections is summarised below under headings to reflect the dual local (north-west Essex) and global range of subjects covered. In general, the Museum’s collecting area will be defined by relevance to Uttlesford District, the area of north-west Essex defined by the local authority boundary of Uttlesford District Council.

  Occasionally offers of appropriate objects or specimens may be accepted for subjects which are non-local by their nature, such as ethnography, as described below. The time span within which the Museum collects also varies according to subject. For the archaeology and history of Uttlesford, all periods from earliest prehistoric to today are relevant. For geological collections, the time-frame extends backwards to include Pleistocene remains and beyond that fossils from the Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Caenozoic eras.

  Human History and Culture of north-west Essex, and its regional and British context

  1. Archaeology – excavated finds and records from Uttlesford, all periods from prehistoric to post medieval, and finds made as a result of other fieldwork or by chance. Historically, the Museum also holds some antiquarian finds from the region and further afield.
  2. Social and Local History: objects, ephemera and documents – made or used in Uttlesford, or associated with local places and people
  3. Pictorial: Prints, Watercolours, Paintings, Drawings and Photographs reflecting the history, people and natural history of Uttlesford, but excluding ‘fine art’
  4. Costume, Textiles, Needlework and Accessories – range of English and local.
  5. Ceramics and Glass – British and European ceramics and glassware, 16th – 20th century (decorative arts).
  6. Woodwork and Furniture – local and English domestic woodwork of 14th – 18th century and a small collection of English furniture of 16th-18th century

  Natural Environment of north-west Essex and its regional and British context

  The natural science collections contain about 70,000 specimens of plants, animals, rocks, minerals and fossils. The founders of the Museum and other 19th century naturalists presented most of these specimens. They collected in Essex and the rest of Britain.

  1. Plants – specimens of flowering plants, ferns, mosses, liverworts, fungi, lichens and algae
  2. Animals – mammals, birds, birds’ eggs, amphibians, reptiles, fish, insects, molluscs and other invertebrate groups
  3. Fossils – fossils from Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Caenozoic eras of geological time
  4. Minerals and Rocks – minerals; sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks

  Human History and Culture – the wider world

  1. Mediterranean and Egyptian antiquities – a small collection including pre-dynastic to Ptolemaic artefacts and one Roman-period mummy from Egypt, and pottery from Greece and Cyprus.
  2. Ethnography (world cultures) – a collection of international significance, over 4,000 objects mostly collected between the late 18th and early 20th centuries, all continents and many different cultures represented.

  Natural Environment – the wider world

  Specimens illustrating the natural environments of continents around the world.

  1. Plants – plants collected outside Britain in the 19th century
  2. Animals – animals collected outside Britain during the 19th and early 20th centuries
  3. Geology – rocks, minerals and fossils found outside Britain

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2019

  Licence: CC BY-NC