Blog

News

5 minute read

For children and young people who love exploring, love history and love collecting, the Wheels of Time badge collecting scheme that we're launching in Surrey museums this Summer is going to be right up their street.

News

5 minute read

Chainsaw Artist, Ella Fielding, carved this stunning totem pole of Surrey wildlife taken from our Get Wild About Surrey museum project.

News

2 minute read

Surrey History Centre's Marvel of the Month for December comes from the Surrey Finds Liaison Officer who reports on an unusual and significant archaeological discovery.

News

2 minute read

As museums & galleries pay their respects to her HM Queen Elizabeth II, we share a few.

News

1 minute read

West Byfleet Wit Knits have been busy preparing for the Platinum Jubilee in their own special way.

News

1 minute read

Surrey Museums & Galleries are delighted to be opening their doors again to the public after a long period of visiting closures.

News

3 minute read

The National Trust site of Witley Camp has long since returned to common land with little above the surface to tell the incredible tales of its history. Tales of the many thousands of lives impacted here across the First and Second world wars, and the times in between. It is hoped that this excellent new audio guide will increase awareness of its importance.

News

2 minute read

As coronavirus restrictions have eased for museums and galleries in England since the 4th July, more museums in Surrey are delighted to be opening their doors to the public once more. But with all the safety measures in place to make visiting possible, we ask how much will it impact the cultural experience for visitors?

News

2 minute read

Museums, galleries and heritage sites across Surrey have been closed to the public since March. That doesn’t mean the wheels stopped turning however, and our heritage organizations have continued to provide a greatly valued service to the public at home. But that's not the whole story. Our latest blog gives you a taste of what life is like in Surrey museums behind the closed doors.

Collections

1 minute read

The Routemaster bus is certainly a UK, if not a worldwide, icon. Nearly 3000 examples were built from the late 1950s until the mid 1960s.

Collections

1 minute read

This bronze statuette shows King John sealing the Magna Carta with Archbishop Stephen Langton and the Earl of Albermarle.

Collections

1 minute read

The paintings of Windsor Castle on grains of rice were created by Charles Gunner in around 1936 as part of his miniature history of the royal residence.

Collections

1 minute read

Brookwood Hospital opened in 1867 as Brookwood Asylum and was the leading mental hospital for the West of Surrey.

Collections

1 minute read

The mahogany and brass Magic Lantern was made by Lancaster and Sons in 1878 and became the subject of Charles Goodwin Norton of Shere.

Collections

1 minute read

Originally from Chertsey Abbey and dating to the 12th century, this sandstone head stands witness to some of the most pivotal and calamitous events in Tudor and Stuart England.

Collections

1 minute read

Painshill Park was created between 1738 and 1773 by the Honourable Charles Hamilton and is one of the most important 18th century landscapes in Europe.

Collections

1 minute read

This is one of the most important Roman objects in Britain. The discovery of artefacts at Wanborough Roman Temple led to major changes in national law following its looting and destruction in the eighties. Archaeologists did manage to recover a small proportion of the objects, including this priest’s head-dress.

Collections

1 minute read

Built on the site of the famous Epsom spa, the Assembly Rooms originally housed a tavern, a coffee shop, a shop, gambling tables in the ground floor room of the rear range, and space for dancing in the Long Room above.

Collections

1 minute read

This Palaeolithic hand axe found at Llanaway is a particularly beautiful flint hand axe. It is the oldest human artefact in Godalming Museum’s collection, and at least 400,000 years old. It always gives me a thrill to handle an object so unimaginably ancient.

People

1 minute read

Jack Phillips, the Chief Wireless Operator on the Titanic, was born in Farncombe and learned Morse code working at Godalming Post Office.

Recent Projects

2 minute read

Conservator, Hazel Neill, describes how she restored this beautiful painting

People

1 minute read

Painshill’s magnificent Grade 1 listed 18th Century Georgian landscape garden was created in the naturalistic style between 1738 and 1773, and was the artistic vision of one English gentleman, the Hon. Charles Hamilton, 9th son and 14th child of the 6th Earl of Abercorn

People

1 minute read

Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria’s reign Alfred, Lord Tennyson came to Haslemere in 1868.

People

1 minute read

Sir William More is, perhaps, an improbable Surrey hero. Though a fine, upstanding gentleman, friendly with some of the great names of the Elizabethan age, including the Queen herself, he was not a statesman, soldier or author, but a typical Tudor gentleman who spent most of his time managing his estates and involving himself in county affairs. It is what he left behind that causes us to pay him tribute.

People

1 minute read

In his own lifetime George Frederic Watts was widely considered to be the greatest painter of the Victorian age, enjoying an unparalleled reputation.

People

1 minute read

In 1910 at the age of 47 and with 2 children, Hilda Hewlett set up a flying school at the Brooklands motor racing circuit with business partner Gustave Blondeau.

People

1 minute read

John Wornham Penfold, born at Courts Hill (now ‘Penfolds’) in Haslemere in 1828, spent much of his working life as an architect and surveyor in London. His most significant project was to oversee a vast construction project in Cripplegate following a destructive fire in 1889. Penfold was a founder members of The Institution of Surveyors.

People

1 minute read

Universally known as “Mrs.Beeton”, Isabella Beeton was a publishing phenomenon, becoming a household name that far outlived her 28 years. She lived much of her early life at Epsom racecourse where her step-father was clerk.

People

1 minute read

Evelyn's diaries or memoirs are largely of the same period as the other noted diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys.

People

1 minute read

William Cobbett “The Poor Man’s Friend ”is arguably the most influential person Farnham has ever produced.

People

1 minute read

Farnham hero, John Henry Knight (1847-1917) was a wealthy landowner and a prolific inventor. In 1895 he built Britain’s first petrol-powered motor vehicle, and was prosecuted for using a locomotive with neither a licence nor a man walking in front with a red flag.

People

1 minute read

2012 marks the centenary of Guildford-born Alan Turing, described as the father of the modern computer. His life's work included both breaking the German 'Enigma' code in WW2, and in laying the foundations of computer science.

People

1 minute read

Jekyll created over 400 gardens in the UK, Europe and America and her influence on garden design continues. A childhood in Bramley forged Jekyll’s love of Surrey, later moving to Godalming. Jekyll’s collaborations with Sir Edwin Lutyens are well known, designing gardens for many of his houses, including Orchards, her own home in Munstead.

People

1 minute read

Ralph Vaughan Williams is arguably one of Britain’s greatest composers, with notable and powerful compositions such as Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and The Lark Ascending.

People

1 minute read

Often described as the Richard Branson of the nineteenth century, Thomas Holloway was a Victorian entrepreneur who became a self-made millionaire from the sales of his patent ‘cure all’ medicines, pills and ointments.

People

1 minute read

Edward “Lumpy” Stevens was the most famous bowler of his age. He was born in Send and buried in Walton-on-Thames. Cricket then was played with two stumps and only a single bail.

People

1 minute read

Born in Guildford, son of a cloth-worker, Abbot was educated at the Royal Grammar School then Balliol College, Oxford. By 1600 he was the University’s Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Winchester.

People

1 minute read

Ethel Smyth found fame as a composer in the late 19th century and as the author of novels such as Female Pipings for Eden. She became a driving force in the Women’s Social and Political Union Suffragette movement, which led to repeated arrests.