Museum History

Short History

Tewkesbury Museum is a community museum protecting and displaying the heritage of the Town .

64 and 64a Barton Street was given to the Borough in 1956 on the understanding that it would be used as the Town Museum. Not all members of the council thought this was a good idea. The Tewkesbury Register quoted some councillors as suggesting the idea was a 'dead loss for the town'.

Sir George Dowty finally opened the museum in 1962. The delay was due to many necessary repairs and sitting tenants that did not leave until 1961.

The fact that there was no town museum until very late meant that many important artefacts were not kept or decayed because of a lack of appropriate storage space. A good example of this was the lack of relics of the stocking loom period (after Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, Tewkesbury was the most important centre of manufacture in the country.)

The collections in Tewkesbury Museum reflect human activity in the region over the last 5000 years. Roman finds include a skeleton, metalwork, pottery and coins. There is a fine collection of Medieval material particularly from the Holm Castle excavations. These consist of 12th-13th century tiles, pottery, coins, metalwork, and stone masonry.

The Victorian to Twentieth century collections cover every aspect of civic, social and industrial life in the locality. There is a particularly fine set of large-scale fairground models celebrating Tewkesbury's role as the home of a fairground equipment manufacturer.