Chertsey Museum — Attraction in Borough of Runnymede

My wife and I visited the Museum yesterday (01/09/23) for the first time. There is no carpark but we found free on street parking not far away in St Anne's Close.

This is an excellent small museum, housed over three floors of an historic house.

The ground floor comprises three rooms. One is devoted to local history from prehistoric to modern times. Look out for the Viking sword and the various Bronze Age swords. One of the other two rooms has a display of costume accessories. There is a case of fans (with a wall plaque informing you of the language of fans) and another of lace. There are also cases of hats and shoes as well as a fine pair of thick, pink silk stockings! The other room is used for various temporary exhibitions of costumes drawn from the Museum's extensive collection. On our visit, costumes of the 1930's were on display including high couture dresses: wonderful stuff.

The upper floors had displays on recent excavations at Runnymede and a room devoted to clocks of various kinds. There was also a fine display of Ancient Greek pottery with pieces from all periods. Even the stairwell had interesting displays including wooden lampposts used to press into sand to form the moulds for cast iron lampposts and information on local industries such as tank design and building, Lagonda cars, aircraft propellers, and cars made by Bleriot.

This Museum is...

An interesting little museum, worth a visit for it's free displays. Holds an impressive amount of historical artifacts and clothing considering its small size with three floors. Would recommend for children, there are dressing up opportunities in Victorian garments and other activities such as jigsaw puzzles on the walls on the top floor in an effort to make the information more interactive.

One of the main displays on the middle floor needs some attention, however. There are buttons to press for audio recordings but these take around five minutes to listen to each, with nowhere to sit in the narrow coridoor and little to look at visually. This being as it is it's unlikely for visitors to take in the full factual information given which is a shame.

Apart from this, it's useful and accurate historically and the staff in the gift...

Fascinating place to find out about local history. Went here on a private viewing of the CC41 clothing collection with my costume making team. Grace was very knowledgeable and helpful answering questions and allowing us to have a good look at how the garments were constructed. We also had a chance to look at the rest...