Abstract
July 15 of this year marked the centenary of the Winchester City Museum, and the curator, Mr. Frank Cottrill, has appropriately marked the occasion with a short account of its history and growth. Established in 1847 as the Hampshire Museum, this institution set out to save for posterity collections illustrative of local history, antiquities and natural history which might otherwise have been “lost or disregarded, retained in private hands, or have found their way to distant exhibitions”. For a time the Hampshire Museum flourished on private donations and subscriptions, but later, as has been the case in so many of the local museums founded during or near the same period, this form of support was not maintained. The nature of the collections, however, and the increased use of the Museum by the public, fully justified the upkeep of the institution. Accordingly, in 1851 it was transferred to the custody of the Winchester Town Council, under the government of which it remains at the present time. A Museum Committee was appointed, and the institution from then on became known as the City Museum. In this way was the safety of the Winchester collections safeguarded. Originally housed in the Hyde Abbey schoolroom, the collections were removed first to part of the old jail in Jewry Street, then to the top floor of the Guildhall, and finally, in 1903, to the present building in the Square. Prior to that, in 1898, the Museum was extended by the opening of the Westgate as a second museum. This was largely due to the interest and beneficence of Alderman W. H. Jacob, a keen local historian. A beautiful old building dating from the thirteenth century, but unfortunately overshadowed by modern constructions entirely out of keeping, Westgate to-day houses, among other things, the City's famous collection of weights and measures ranging in date from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries. Here, also, is preserved the Winchester moot-horn of about a.d. 1200.
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Winchester City Museums, 1847–1947. Nature 160, 253–254 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/160253c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/160253c0