The museum’s collection comprises artefacts relating to the Borough of Ashford and its people
The collection is represented by a number of displays including:
- A pre-historic collection starting with a 200 million year old dinosaur leg bone found in 2001 at Washford farm.
- Artefacts from the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Romano- Briton and Anglo-Saxon periods.
- The First World War
- World War Two including information on the Prisoner of War camps within the Borough.
- Our Ashford Litter – one of very few examples that exist in the UK.
- Medical instruments from the old Ashford and cottage hospitals.
- Railway memorabilia including artefacts from the railway and works, photographs and a model railway to recall the important role that railways played in the towns history.
- Ashford Market, one of the oldest in the country, started in the 13th century by Royal charter.
- The military history of the town.
Our touch screen media unit has information about the stories behind some other exhibits and clips from the recordings of interviews taken during research for the “All Change for Ashford” performance.
Library
Our collection of books and papers is now available for research. An appointment must be made in advance. A catalogue of the items is available here.
Contributing to our collections
We welcome donations of aretefacts that meet our collection development objectives.
The Museum has limited space for storage and display so needs to ensure that its collection meets its objectives. Our Collections Development Policy states:
Themes and priorities for future collecting
- Collecting will continue to add objects that enable it to “Tell Ashford’s Story” and will accept donations of objects and documents that have a proven connection to Ashford, its people, history and development.
- Other than in exceptional circumstances, the Museum will only accept artefacts that are donated to the Museum and not those offered on loan.
In practice this means that we will only accept objects for which there is evidence of a connection with Ashford. For example, we are unlikely to accept your granny’s tin bath just because she lived in Ashford, but we might accept it if the metal was stamped “J. U. Bugler Ltd.”
We do not normally accept objects on loan. If you do donate an artefact we will ask whether you would like it returned if we decide not to take it into our collections, but once it has been accessioned to our collections would not be returnable. As is normal practice for museums, and a result of having limited display space, not all items will be added to our displays but will kept for future display or research.