The Salisbury Museum (previously The Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum) is a museum in

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, England. It houses one of the best collections relating to Stonehenge and local

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

. The museum is housed in The King's House, a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

, where

King James I of England James VI and I (James Charles Stuart; 19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until ...

was entertained in 1610 and 1613. Set in the surroundings of the Cathedral Close, the museum faces the west front of Salisbury Cathedral. Previously at 40-42 St Ann Street, where it had been founded in 1860 by Dr Richard Fowler, FRS, it transferred to its current site in 1981. The original three-storey building, with

mullion A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid supp ...

ed and transomed windows, ornate plaster ceilings and a fine oak-balustraded staircase, houses the main temporary exhibition gallery with the ceramics gallery above. The arms of James I's eldest son, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, can be seen in a window in the

Wedgwood Wedgwood is an English fine china, porcelain and luxury accessories manufacturer that was founded on 1 May 1759 by the potter and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood and was first incorporated in 1895 as Josiah Wedgwood and Sons Ltd. It was rapid ...

gallery upstairs. The director of the museum is Adrian Green. The Giant and Hobnob

Temporary exhibitions

Summer exhibitions since 2011 have featured artists who share a close connection with the locality. * In 2011, the temporary exhibition was 'Constable and Salisbury'. Timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of John Constable's first visit to Salisbury, the exhibition contained over forty original oil paintings, watercolours and drawings, including the famous 'Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows'. * In the summer of 2012, Salisbury Museum presented 'Circles And Tangents' featuring the work of artists connected with Cranborne Chase, including

Augustus John Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarge ...

Henry Lamb Henry Taylor Lamb (21 June 1883 – 8 October 1960) was an Australian-born British painter. A follower of Augustus John, Lamb was a founder member of the Camden Town Group in 1911 and of the London Group in 1913. Early life Henry Lamb was bo ...

Ben Nicholson Benjamin Lauder Nicholson, OM (10 April 1894 – 6 February 1982) was an English painter of abstract compositions (sometimes in low relief), landscape and still-life. Background and training Nicholson was born on 10 April 1894 in De ...

John Craxton John Leith Craxton RA, (3 October 1922 – 17 November 2009) was an English painter. He was sometimes called a neo-Romantic artist but he preferred to be known as a "kind of Arcadian". Biography Career John was the son of musician Harold ...

Lucian Freud Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewis ...

, Stanley Spencer,

Elisabeth Frink Dame Elisabeth Jean Frink (14 November 1930 – 18 April 1993) was an English sculptor and printmaker. Her ''Times'' obituary noted the three essential themes in her work as "the nature of Man; the 'horseness' of horses; and the divine in ...

, William Nicholson and over 25 others. * From May to September 2013,

Rex Whistler Reginald John "Rex" Whistler (24 June 190518 July 1944) was a British artist, who painted murals and society portraits, and designed theatrical costumes. He was killed in action in Normandy in World War II. Whistler was the brother of poet and ...

: 'A Talent Cut Short' was the temporary exhibition. * The summer exhibition for 2015 was 'Turner's Wessex: Architecture and Ambition'. It featured a collection of brilliant watercolours made by J. M. W. Turner as a young man in the Salisbury area, and was curated by Ian Warrell. *In 2017 the summer exhibition was 'Ancient Landscapes', showcasing works from such artists as

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...

, Barbara Hepworth and Paul Nash. The works had the subject of Stonehenge and the surrounding Salisbury Plain. On three days in August, there was a theatre production in the gardens of the museum by Stage '65,

Salisbury Playhouse Salisbury Playhouse is a theatre in the English city of Salisbury, Wiltshire. It was built in 1976 and comprises the 517-seat Main House and the 149-seat Salberg, a rehearsal room and a community & education space. It is part of Arts Council En ...

's youth theatre.

Notable objects

Lake House meteorite

On 10 September 2012, a meteorite, possibly the biggest to have ever fallen on the British Isles, went on display at the museum. For at least 80 years it sat near the front door of Lake House at Wilsford-cum-Lake near Salisbury. When the house was sold, the stone was confirmed as a meteorite by the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

where it remained in storage for many years. Professor Colin Pillinger, known for his work on the

Beagle 2 The ''Beagle 2'' is an inoperative British Mars lander that was transported by the European Space Agency's 2003 ''Mars Express'' mission. It was intended to conduct an astrobiology mission that would have looked for evidence of past life on Mar ...

Mars spacecraft, had been studying a smaller meteorite from the Danebury Hill Fort in Hampshire and felt that there could be a connection between the two. The meteorite from Lake House was retrieved from storage and although the two objects were found to be unrelated, Professor Pillinger continued with his study of the larger meteorite. The meteorite landed on earth some 30,000 years ago and was apparently preserved by the frozen conditions during the last ice age. In normal circumstances the meteorite would have disintegrated, but the cold and ice helped preserve it. Thousands of years later, in the Stone or Bronze Age, it is thought that the meteorite was built into a burial mound close to Lake House. The local chalk environment would again have helped to preserve it. The meteorite may have been unearthed in the 19th century by Edward Duke, a previous owner of Lake House who was an antiquarian who excavated burial mounds nearby and had his own private museum. Photographic evidence shows it on the doorstep of Lake House at the time the property was owned by the brewer Joseph Lovibond, Mayor of Salisbury in 1878–79 and 1890–91.

Prehistoric hoards

In November 2011 the Museum displayed the Wardour Hoard of over 100 copper alloy objects, over 2,700 years old, from the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. It was found near Wardour by a metal detectorist, and consists of tools such as axe heads, chisels, sickles and gouges, as well as spearheads, daggers, knives, swords and scabbard fittings. It was the most important hoard to have been found in Wiltshire since the discovery of the Salisbury Hoard in the 1980s. In around 2014, the museum acquired the Wylye Hoard.

The New Wessex Gallery of Archaeology

In June 2012, the

Heritage Lottery Fund The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...

(HLF) awarded Salisbury Museum a grant of £1,794,600 towards the development of a new Archaeology of Wessex gallery. The new gallery opened in the summer of 2014 and is of international importance, telling the story of Salisbury and the surrounding area from prehistoric times to the

Norman Conquest The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Con ...

, and showing why Salisbury has a unique place in history. The museum's collections include some of the most important archaeological finds in Britain, including artefacts from the

Stonehenge World Heritage Site Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) in Wiltshire, England. The WHS covers two large areas of land separated by about , rather than a specific monument or building. The sites were inscribed as co-listi ...

, the Pitt Rivers Wessex Collection and the

Amesbury Archer The Amesbury Archer is an early Bronze Age (Bell Beaker) man whose grave was discovered during excavations at the site of a new housing development () in Amesbury near Stonehenge. The grave was uncovered in May 2002. The man was middle aged ...

Other collections

A £350,000 grant from the

National Heritage Memorial Fund The National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) was set up in 1980 to save the most outstanding parts of the British national heritage, in memory of those who have given their lives for the UK. It replaced the National Land Fund which had fulfilled the ...

was awarded in August 2013, to help save the personal archive of

. The Salisbury Museum then purchased the archive, which contains over 1,000 items and is the only substantial collection of material relating to the artist. The Museum has an art collection of over 4,000 paintings, prints and drawings, representing local personalities, topographical scenes, special events and everyday life, or created by local artists of note. An outstanding Costume Collection includes clothes relating to the people in and around Salisbury over the past 250 years, including wedding dresses, uniforms, formal wear and lace samples produced by Downton Lace. The Museum also has an outstanding collection of ceramics. Local

Verwood Verwood is a town and civil parish in eastern Dorset, England. The town lies north of Bournemouth and north east of Poole as the crow flies. The civil parish comprises the town of Verwood together with the extended village of Three Legged Cro ...

and Wiltshire Brown ware is represented alongside the celebrated Wedgwood, Bow and Chelsea potteries. The Museum also has a collection illustrating the history of the Salisbury cutlery industry.

References

External links

*
Details of the Wardour Hoard
{{DEFAULTSORT:Salisbury Museum Museums in Salisbury Grade I listed buildings in Wiltshire Stonehenge Archaeological museums in England Decorative arts museums in England Art museums and galleries in Wiltshire Fashion museums in the United Kingdom Local museums in Wiltshire Museums established in 1860 1860 establishments in England City museums in the United Kingdom