Norfolk Museums

Institution, Museums

Inquire

Scope of Collection: Collection-level records:

Collection history (Collection development policy)

Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery
Archaeology
Archaeology was one of the principal collecting areas of the Norwich Museum from its first foundation in 1824. Although this has enabled the present-day collections to include various items found in the 19th century, the first major benefactor donating material was Robert Fitch, a Norwich chemist who donated a large antiquarian collection in 1894. His finds were principally collected from Norfolk with a few from Suffolk and covered most chronological periods. A particular interest of Fitch appears to have been the medieval period as two especially fine collections, of seal matrices and finger-rings, were among his donations and provide the basis for the Castle Museum’s maintained eminence in these areas.
Other major collections include those of the Beloe family, which has a good assemblage of pilgrim badges, and the Perowne bequest of medieval manuscripts, including ornately decorated psalters and a rare processional from Castle Acre priory.
Norfolk has always been archaeologically rich and a number of important excavations have been undertaken in the county, the archives of which were given to Norwich Castle. The Castle Museum has hence come to act as the county museum for archaeology and the repository for all county excavations. Among the more important sites in the collections are North Elmham Park, site of the Anglo-Saxon see of East Anglia; Spong Hill, Britain’s largest Anglo-Saxon cremation cemetery; and the Anglo-Saxon inhumation cemeteries of Bergh Apton, Morningthorpe, Harford Farm, Caister by Yarmouth and Burgh Castle. Medieval sites include the Castle Mall excavation, then the largest urban excavation in Europe.
The rise of metal-detecting in the 1970s saw a fundamental change in the way the archaeology collections developed and Norfolk was one of the first counties to embrace the hobby and liaise with detector users. The late Dr Sue Margeson was especially important in developing the collection with metal-detected finds, specialising in 10th-11th century Scandinavian finds from which she explored issues of ethnicity and migration that have now become current in modern scholarship. As a result, the Castle has a particularly fine collection of Early Medieval material.
Modern collecting has continued this lead and through an active acquisition policy, attempted to meet the challenge of Norfolk yielding more Treasure cases and more Portable Antiquities than any other county in UK. Rationalisation in recent years has attempted to refine the collections to having a Norfolk focus or, for prehistoric periods before the county border was a meaningful construct, an East Anglian relevance.
Fine Art
The earliest collection of paintings to be acquired by the Norwich Museum was in 1841 when Captain William Manby presented a unique collection of 17 seascapes in oil and watercolours. When an art gallery was first incorporated in the Norwich Museum in 1894 the nucleus of the collection was a gift of 80 Norwich School paintings from the East Anglian Art Society. In 1898, twenty major Norwich School paintings were bequeathed by JJ Colman of Colman’s Ltd.
The Norwich School collection was developed under the curatorship of James Reeve. The greatest gift to the collection was the Russell James Colman Bequest of 1946, which included thousands of Norwich School paintings, watercolours, drawings and prints and funds for the construction of art galleries to house them.
The Museum has acquired numerous items through gifts, bequests and purchases over the years, building a small but important collection of 17th century Dutch and Flemish art including 93 etchings by Rembrandt, among others.
Decorative Art
From its inception the remit of the decorative arts collections has included ceramics, glass, silver and jewellery from 16th century to the present day. Traditionally it has mainly comprised British objects, and very little European material. There were a few Oriental pieces, mostly of Chinese export porcelain, acquired mostly during the late 19th-early 20th century, although many of these were sold to Liverpool Museums in the 1950s, clearly reflecting a change of curatorial policy at the time.
The main focus of the collections has been and remains to emphasise works of greatest relevance to Norfolk, and/or East Anglia. These include Norwich-made silver, dating from the period of the city’s assay from 1567 through to 1697. The earliest Norwich silver donation occurred in 1894, from Robert Fitch, an important local benefactor who gave significant works of fine and decorative arts in all media, including the Chinese export wares referred to above. Lowestoft porcelain has also been an important focus for the collections, originating from the only factory in East Anglia, operational c1760-1800. Significant donations of Lowestoft porcelain were given during the 1920s-50s, particularly by Susanna Taylor in 1938 and Mrs Russell Colman in 1948.
In 1946 a bequest of over 600 18th century ceramic teapots from Edward Bulwer began the Castle’s collecting in this area. A purchase from Philip Miller of almost 2,000 19th-20th century teapots in 1992 later ensured the continued centrality of teapots within decorative arts at Norwich Castle.
Other major holdings in the decorative arts collection include 1,100 pieces of 18th-20th century jewellery, donated by the nationally important collector Mrs Anne Hull Grundy during the 1970s.
Natural History
Natural history collections formed the bulk of the original material acquired by Norwich Museum when it was formed in 1825. Most of the early exhibits were private collections donated to the Museum by its founders, and this tradition of donating by local naturalists continues today. Many early specimens were collected abroad but current policy places greater emphasis on local material. In the past, particularly important specimens were usually purchased but today most material comes from donation and staff fieldwork.
The bird collections include many fine examples of Victorian taxidermy. They mostly date from the 19th and early 20th centuries, but are still added to from road and weather casualties. There is a large collection of birds’ eggs which is no longer added to for ethical and legal reasons; the two Great Auk eggs are the most important individual items.
Mammals include specimens from Victorian and Edwardian foreign expeditions including a Polar Bear and a notable group of antelope, including Nile Lechwe, as well as East Anglian specimens.
The entomology includes several large and important collections, notably the pre-eminent Fountaine-Neimy bequest of 22,000 Lepidoptera. This resulted from a lifetime’s collecting by Margaret Fountaine, who travelled all over the world from 1892. Her bequest included a sealed box which when opened in 1978 was found to contain twelve journals detailing her life from 1878 until her death in 1940. This combination of a scientifically important collection and sociologically significant literature is not unique but there are few naturalists who have collected in and written about sixty countries on six continents over fifty years. Much of the modern invertebrate material has been collected during recent survey work.
The most important collection of molluscs is that of WJO Holmes, with 12,000 British specimens.
The botany collections include a main herbarium of 50,000 vascular plants, mostly local material. They incorporate material from naturalists including JD Salmon, J Paget and EL Swann.
Geological specimens reflect the geology of Norfolk but the collection has been built up by the generosity of geologists who have donated or bequeathed their own collections which were often built up from trips further afield. Because of this the collections contain some exotic specimens.
Disposals have included foreign material given to Liverpool and Coventry Museums after the war, and part collections bought by the British Museum (Natural History) when it was actively seeking to acquire type material. Notable transfers of the latter sort include the Gurney birds of prey and Edwards’ type series of Homopteran bugs.
Costume & Textile
The Costume and Textile collections of Norwich Museums were originally part of the Strangers’ Hall Museum. They were created as a domestic life collection that gives an understanding of how people lived through the clothes they wore, the textiles in their homes and the crafts they practised.
In 1922 the collections of Strangers’ Hall were incorporated into the City of Norwich collections and are believed to be one of the earliest Social History museums in the country. Enriched with collections such as the 1938 Buxton donation which contained important 16th-18th century costume and domestic textiles, the Norwich collections had an excellent reputation among textile historians.
From the 1960s onwards the collections were proactively developed to include not only high status fashionable dress and textiles but also: working dress; sporting and leisure dress; religious dress; and Norwich textiles including Norwich shawls, pattern books of worsted cloths from the 18th century, and dress and furnishing silks and horsehair fabrics of the 19th century. The pioneering curator Pamela Clabburn was largely responsible for this systematic collecting programme and for raising awareness of the collections, especially those of the Norwich shawl industry, to the growing community of dress and textile historians working across the UK.
In 1973 the Costume Society held its annual conference in Norwich with the subject of Strata of Society, recognising the Norwich collections’ pre-eminence in collecting working dress.
Museum of Norwich
The Museum of Norwich was known until 2013 as the Bridewell Museum. Since its redevelopment and redisplay (2009-12) the focus of the museum has changed from Norwich trades and industries to the wider story of the development of Norwich as a city.
The Museum of Norwich at The Bridewell, formerly the Bridewell Museum of Trades & Industries, has its origins in the 1920s. In 1923 Sir Henry Holmes, a successful shoe manufacturer, bought the Norwich Bridewell with the intention of giving it to the City as a museum of local trades and industries. The Bridewell building itself already had a rich history, as home to the first Mayor of Norwich, as well as latterly becoming the city’s House of Correction.
The museum was opened by the Duke of York in October 1925. It presented items linked to Norfolk crafts and industries, with displays on printing, shoe making, local building techniques, agriculture, textiles, transport and engineering, country crafts and leather working. A display on blacksmithing was installed in the undercroft in 1936 and relocated upstairs in 1966. Those visiting in the 1950s would remember the display of live birds, which complemented the display on local canary breeding.
In 1975, the rural life collections were transferred to the newly established Gressenhall Museum, establishing a newly developing focus for the museum on the City of Norwich rather than the county of Norfolk.
In 1985, John Newstead, a local pharmacist, donated his extensive collection relating to pharmacy. The collection of over 2,400 items was then, like today, displayed as a traditional chemist shop made up of the contents and shop fittings of over sixty separate shops from across East Anglia.
The museum reopened in 2012 after a major redevelopment project. Following extensive public consultation, the building was made fit for the 21st century with ten refurbished galleries telling the story of Norwich and its people. New displays chart the progress of Norwich from Medieval times up to the present day, with the focus on telling those histories through individual lives. Objects from Strangers’ Hall, the Costume & Textiles collection and Norwich Castle Art collections were used to support the new focus. In particular large 20th century domestic life collections were used in galleries which focus on the city from 1900 onwards.
Strangers’ Hall
Strangers’ Hall is an historic house museum established in 1900 by its founder Leonard Bolingbroke, a local solicitor and antiquarian, who gifted the museum and its collections to the City of Norwich in 1922. His collecting interests were wide and can be found throughout Norwich’s museum and archive collections. He created open displays of period room settings and installed cased folk life collections. Much of the museum’s original furniture remains on display today.
The folk life ethos was developed by curator Frank Leney, drawing inspiration from the Scandinavian model of collecting based on local ways of life and traditional building preservation. The period rooms were enhanced by notable acquistions in the 1920s-30s. These included Tudor and Stuart furniture for the Great Hall, high quality textiles including a rare 16th century table carpet, fine Georgian dining furniture and the significant Londonmade 18th century glass chandelier.
In the 1960s-70s the collecting remit broadened under curators including Rachel Young and Pamela Clabburn. New period rooms were set out including architectural features such as panelling and ceilings from notable local buildings. The new focus prioritised the collecting of costume and textiles, where a large collection was rapidly accumulated. The costume and textile collections were moved out of Strangers’ Hall in 1996 and are now housed at the Shirehall under the care of the Costume & Textile Department.
An increasingly local remit developed for social history collecting in the 1980s-2000s under curators Fiona Strodder and Helen Renton with the aim of ensuring a record of 20th century domestic life in particular.
Large objects were collected initially but restricted storage has impacted upon the museum’s capacity to add to these collections in recent years. Limited collecting continues in key areas.
Royal Norfolk Regimental Museum
The proposal for a museum devoted to the Norfolk Regiment was first mooted in the regimental journal ‘The Britannia’ in 1931. The editor wrote ‘It would undoubtedly be a useful institution in the Regiment and would serve as an interesting repository for many articles which now, being scattered, may eventually be lost, although of great Regimental interest. Many things which by themselves appear of little general interest would nevertheless be very useful in a Museum, and such articles as original operation orders, letters, photographs, articles of enemy equipment, or other battlefield relics would be most interesting.
By October 1934 a regular list of items being sent in for inclusion in the museum was being published. This was a collection set up by the Regiment for the Regiment and it remained in Britannia Barracks, in the Regimental Association offices until 1990, when The Royal Norfolk Regimental Museum came under the management of Norfolk Museums Service under the terms of a 25 year agreement between the Trustees of the Collection and Norfolk County Council. Initially the Museums Service only took on the items that were to be displayed, but gradually moved most of the collection and all the archive into its care. In 2015 the agreement was renewed for another 25 years.
Under the terms of this agreement the Trustees loan the collection to the Museums Service, and continue to support it through project grants. Norfolk Museums Service cares for the collection, displays it and employs curatorial staff to manage and provide access to it. The Trustees will, in consultation with the Head of Museums, acquire items for the Regimental Museum by purchase, gift or bequest. Such items are the property of the Trustees.
With the move of the collection into the NMS came a new focus in its display and interpretation into the social history of the regiment, and then the experience and stories of individual soldiers. In 2013 the Regimental displays were moved from the Shirehall Study Centre into the heart of the Castle Museum galleries.
Gressenhall Farm & Workhouse
Curator Bridget Yates set up the Norfolk Rural Life Museum in 1976, having worked since 1970 on sourcing the rural life collections which would be its foundation. At its creation a significant number of rural items from the Norwich social history collections of the Museum of Norwich at the Bridewell (formerly the Bridewell Museum) and Strangers’ Hall were transferred to the new museum.
Bridget was curator of the rural life collections for 18 years, collecting throughout the county, often at a prolific rate – at times 500 objects per week were collected. Another major influence on the collection was Dick Joice, who advised and supported the collection during its formative years in his role as Chairman of the Friends of Gressenhall. Collecting slowed in the 1980s and 1990s but continued to be focussed on rural crafts, trades and agriculture. The significant Taylor’s Collection from a seed merchant’s shop and warehouse, numbering over 5000 items, was collected in 1982.
During the early part of the 21st century there was a gradual change in collecting policy with a shift in focus to collecting specific crafts, trades and industries currently missing from the collection rather than the broader sweep of earlier years. From 2006 the Curator and Assistant Curator with the support of Bridget Yates (via a Monument Fellowship funded by the Museums Association) have worked to standardise collections management. Collecting now focuses on objects with a context. Significantly, it was not until 2014 that items relating to Norfolk’s workhouses were actively accessioned.
Lynn Museum
Lynn Museum was established in 1844 by members of the Lynn Conversazione and Society of Arts to educate and entertain local residents. It original collections were mostly natural history and ethnography. The museum has since built up social history, industrial history, maritime history, archaeology, decorative art, and fine art collections, which relate to King’s Lynn and West Norfolk.
In 1941, the Lynn Museum took on the collections of the Greenland Fishery Folk Museum following air raid damage to its building. Other major acquisitions include over 3,000 wooden patterns, numerous technical drawings, and paper templates from local engineering company Savages Ltd, acquired when the company closed in 1973, and over 2,000 items from Taylor’s seed merchants donated when the shop closed in 1982.
Recent significant acquisitions include an Iron Age coin hoard in a cow bone container, found at Sedgeford and purchased in 2005, and contemporary artist Steve Cale’s painting Fenland 8000 BC, a legacy of the Fenland project.
Ancient House Museum
The Ancient House Museum was opened in 1924 after Prince Frederick Duleep Singh bought the house and donated it to the town for use as a museum, along with funds for its renovation. He bequeathed 90 portraits, historical objects, and family memorabilia to the town collections, and further pictures were donated after his death. Items from the Thetford Mechanics’ Institute collection of the late 19th century also helped form the original collection focusing on natural history and archaeology.
In its early days, the museum was associated with local antiquarians and natural historians such as WG Clarke (1877-1925) (author of In Breckland Wilds) and H. Dixon Hewitt FGS (1878-1966). During the 1950s and 1960s, staff from Norwich Castle Museum provided curatorial advice to the museum, and in 1974 it became part of Norfolk Museums Service, employing its own professional curator. Collecting broadened to include social and industrial history from the 20th century as well as archaeology, natural history, fine art, photography and ephemera.
Cromer Museum
The first significant addition to the museum archive, three years after it opened in 1978, was the Crawford Holden collection. It consisted of over 2,000 photographs, documents and books. It had been gathered over many years by a keen local historian. It retains a key importance in the museum archive. It had been held in trust for some years and the existence of this collection was partially instrumental in the creation of the museum itself.
Subsequent collecting by the Museum’s curators, donations and judicious purchases has led to the museum holding a significant archive relating to the town’s history. Martin Warren, curator from 1979 to 2000 and a keen geologist, built up a good collection of local fossils in his time at the museum both through his own collecting and donations from keen amateur collectors. As a result of the collecting policy there is little material that does not relate to Cromer and its environs. All of the collection has been documented (other than a normal backlog of recently acquired pieces). Over 17,000 images exist in the collection and the vast majority of the collection has been digitised. There are no significant rationalisation issues relating to the archive.
Great Yarmouth Museums
The Great Yarmouth collections are based over three museums in the town: The Tolhouse Museum & Gaol, opened in 1883; the Elizabethan House Museum, run in partnership with the National Trust which acquired the building in 1951; and Time & Tide Museum which opened in 2004.
The colleczions have been informed by the nature of each museum but a significant part came from the Shipwrecked Sailors’ Home and the former Maritime Museum. The Sailors’ Home on Marine Parade originally opened in 1861. It provided the survivors of shipwrecks with medical help, a change of clothes, food and a bed. It had a small museum which grew as sailors donated the souvenirs they had collected on their travels. The Home closed in 1964 and in 1967 the building reopened as the Maritime Museum which actively collected items relating to Great Yarmouth; the Museum closed in 2002. As the collections originate from a wide variety of sources there are varying levels of documentation across the collections and a range of collections management issues.
Significant individual items include Nelson’s funeral drape and an Anglo-Saxon log boat. There is a fine collection of ship models and an important local marine art collection, including Pierhead paintings.
The Captain Manby collection reflects the eccentric owner of the ship rescue mortar. It consists of his famous mortar which is on display, paper ephemera, paintings of Manby and personal items such as his medals, garments and accessories. The collection also includes the monument to him as well as the largest collection of his inventions in model form.
Also significant is the Press Collection. Joseph Press (1847-1851) was a traveller and sailor from an influential Great Yarmouth family who brought back many items he used aboard ship which are on display at Time & Tide. The collection includes photographs and primary source material, including his own books and ledgers detailing his life and work as a merchant sea captain.
Collecting now focuses on objects with a context that relate directly to the Borough of Great Yarmouth and the three museums. Since the creation of Time & Tide Museum the curatorial staff have done a great deal of work documenting the lives of fishermen, seaside landladies, offshore workers, the Port Authority, shipbuilders, herring curers and lifeboat crews in the local community. A community curators’ forum has been employed to assist with contemporary collecting and commission films and photographs.
Source: Collection development policy
Date: 2018
Licence: CC BY-NC

Collection overview (Collection development policy)

Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery
Archaeology
The Archaeology collections aim to tell the cultural and chronological story of Norfolk, and East Anglia, from the evolution of man to the post-medieval period. They are uniquely placed to do so as traces of the earliest human ancestors in northern Europe have been found in Norfolk, notably Happisburgh, which has yielded the earliest example of a north European handaxe. This and other material from the site is held by Norwich Castle Museum.
The archaeology collections are extensive, numbering over 2,000,000 items and have been Designated in recognition of their outstanding importance and international significance. They incorporate collections of numismatics, arms and armour, maps and manuscripts, ethnography, and foreign archaeology, in particular Egyptology.
While all chronological periods are represented, of particular strength are the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon collections. The Bronze Age material includes a large number of founder’s hoards of various sizes, rare moulds for casting spears and axes and gold work, among which the Wessex-culture grave-group from Little Cressingham and the composite rings from Gresham are notable. Iron Age finds include material from the ritual site at Snettisham including gold torcs, numerous coin hoards issued by the local Iceni tribe; and the excavation assemblage from the ritual complex at Thetford. Anglo-Saxon archaeology is a particular strength of the collections as it includes many excavation assemblages from cemeteries, with attendant grave-goods, and urban sites revealing the process of urbanisation. Outstanding features include Spong Man, the Harford Farm brooch, the Balthilde seal matrix and the second-largest collection of runic-inscribed objects in the UK.
Metal-detecting and ongoing rescue excavation in Norfolk continues to yield large quantities of material. While Norwich Castle Museum still acts as the central repository for excavation archives from the county, limited storage space will mean increased consideration of which archives are accepted in the future, those which have the greatest research and display potential being more likely to be accepted in whole or in part.
Metal-detecting provides a unique challenge as the material found annually is numerically so large and often of financial value which is realised by finders. The Archaeology Department maintains an active policy to acquire the most significant items either through the Treasure Act or through private purchases to maintain and enhance the existing collections.
Handling collections are usually made up of material that is accessioned but which duplicates existing other examples.
Old assemblages are already beginning to be reviewed for the potential to rationalise some or all of their components, while the records are retained. Rationalisation is not generally exercised simply on the basis of the duplication of material as archaeological artefacts are generally considered in terms of their data potential for research. Rationalisation is instead proposed on the basis of items considered of low academic research potential, or which derives from areas outside East Anglia and/or Norfolk.
Fine Art
The fine art collections of Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery are Designated of National importance and date from the medieval period to contemporary art.
The collections include topographical material relating to Norfolk and Norwich including works by the Norwich School of Artists, Norfolk portraits, artists’ personalia, and an art library. They comprise over 24,000 works of art. Of these, approximately 1,200 are paintings, 10,000 are watercolours and drawings and the remainder are prints, printed books and photographs.
Around 900 artists are represented in the collections. The most significant holdings are: Norwich School paintings and drawings (the most significant such collection anywhere in the world); landscapes of the British School; Dutch and Flemish art; Rembrandt etchings; and a small but important collection of modern and contemporary art from Impressionism to the present day.
Decorative Art
The decorative art collections of Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery are Designated of national importance.
The decorative arts collection comprises just over 11,000 objects. Its Norwich silver and Lowestoft porcelain are particularly strong and highly important, both representing the largest collections of these media in public ownership, and including many rare or unique pieces. The ceramic teapots, almost 3,000 items, now represent the largest collection in the world. There is also a small but significant grouping of contemporary craft objects, acquired in recent years. A new donation of 19th-20th century studio ceramics, including late 20th century teapots by prominent British makers, has helped further to augment the outstanding teapot collection.
Current collecting has focused on acquiring a small number of objects of high quality only, with an emphasis on the filling of major gaps, identifying objects of particular relevance to the region, and contextualising items already in the collections. Recent significant acquisitions include a set of internationally important 16th century Norwich-made stained glass roundels, which form part of the Castle Keep’s display reflecting the city’s medieval wealth and prominence. By contrast, the most recent acquisition, a contemporary glass interpretation of the Norwich Snapdragon by a nationally known Norfolk-based maker will also be displayed in the Keep, making a connection between the medieval and modern worlds. These two acquisitions between them represent in microcosm a crucial aim of the Art Department’s collecting as a whole.
Natural History
Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery maintains the major biological and geological collections in Norfolk Museums Service. As well as being of great local and regional significance the collections are Designated as nationally and internationally important.
The collections number about 1,500,000 specimens, covering all aspects of natural history and geology. Although mainly of East Anglian origin, the collections incorporate material from elsewhere in Britain, Europe and the rest of the world. The Natural History Department has a countywide role and in certain groups also acquires reference material from elsewhere in Britain and the rest of the world, but only where it is directly relevant to the existing collections.
The bird collections include several historically important specimens. The skins constitute an important British and European collection; they are often used for reference by artists and amateur and professional ornithologists. The Museum holds extensive egg collections of British and foreign birds numbering some 10,000 specimens, which are an important historical resource for scientists studying bird biology. From a scientific and conservation point of view it is material of the more common species that is most useful.
Among the mammals are important mounted specimens from Australia and Africa. There is a comprehensive collection of East Anglian mammals (skins and mounts) which are frequently used for education and research. The osteology collections are important as reference material for work on Pleistocene mammal remains.
Reptiles and amphibians are not well-represented in the collections (about 130 specimens). The 300 fish specimens are mainly of local origin.
Apart from the Fountaine-Neimy collection, the entomology includes several nationally important collections of British Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera and British and foreign Coleoptera and Hemiptera.
Modern invertebrate material includes marine, freshwater and terrestrial species, mainly from East Anglia, and constitutes the most comprehensive collection of East Anglian non-insect invertebrates. There are extensive collections of foreign shells.
The botany collections comprise mainly local material but also contain exchange specimens from elsewhere in Britain and smaller collections from abroad.
Of the many thousands of geological specimens, some are internationally important. These mostly reflect the geology of the county and therefore are largely fossils from the Chalk, Crag and Ice Age deposits. Highlights of the geology collection include bones, antlers and tusks from large vertebrates of the Cromer Forest Bed formation which outcrops around the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the largest and most complete fossil elephant ever found in Britain, the West Runton elephant.
The archives include some 30,000 letters and 550 manuscript books relating to the collections and local naturalists. Among them are several 18th and early 19th century journals and notebooks. Other historical material held in the Department includes a small collection of microscopes, one of which is of great

Website: Museum Data Service; wikidata