East Surrey Museum

The East Surrey Museum is dedicated to the preservation and display of artefacts, photographs and documents relating to the social history, archaeology and geology of East Surrey from the earliest times to the more recent past. Conveniently located in the centre of Caterham, a minute’s walk from the station and bus routes, the museum is manned entirely by volunteers, many of whom have extensive local knowledge.

Opening Times

Wednesdays and Thursdays 10am to 5pm
Saturdays 10.30 to 4pm

Location details

1 Stafford Rd,
Caterham,
Surrey
CR3 6JG

01883340275

Facilities

toilets

accessible toilets

accessible site

accessible parking

family activities

train nearby

bus nearby

free entry

gift shop

guided tour

baby changing

Go to museum site

Children & Families

The museum is very family-oriented, with lots of hands-on exhibits and activities for children of all ages, including several fun museum trails. In addition we run popular children’s craft activities in the school holidays.
Many interesting displays of largely local exhibits cover the extensive history of the area and offer something for both parents and children. We also have a specific children’s room with vintage toys and games to play with, and a dressing up box to let their imagination take flight.

Schools & Teachers

Many interesting displays of largely local exhibits cover the extensive history of the area and support key elements of the National Curriculum

The museum has an extensive pre-history collection of fossils, local worked flints, pottery and other artefacts, as well as items from the Roman, Medieval and later periods, with large easy-to-read interpretation boards to bring it all to life. The museum also offers an outreach service to schools, providing a number of handling boxes of artefacts to enhance subject learning.

Students & Young People

Due to space limitations, many artefacts owned by the museum are held in store. We have extensive prehistory and medieval collections from archaelogical digs in the area, as well as local maps,postcards and ephemera that can be made available to students on request.

Adult & Community

The Museum is a fascinating venue for a club or society outing, with easy transport links and several pubs and restaurants locally offering refreshments. We have a number of exhibitions covering various aspects of the museum’s collection running throughout the year (details on our website and social media). In addition we run a regular series of lunchtime talks on a very wide range of subjects, so there’s always something of interest going on.

The museum is an ideal venue to undertake some historical research, especially of the local area – we have extensive collections of local maps, postcards, photographs and ephemera to bring the past to life, as well as an archive of local history books and publications to view and for sale, especially from the local history group, the Bourne Society