Where
On Cornhill, right in the centre of the ancient town of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
What
The museum is in an early medieval building dating from 1180. It's been a tavern (a serving girl reported seeing a devil there in the early 14th century), a 17th-century gaol and bridewell and, in the 19th century, a police station.
Opened "It's been used for museumy purposes for a long time," says heritage manager Alan Baxter, "but it was officially opened as a museum in 1899."
Collection
There's a lot on local history, including the Suffolk regiment, the infamous Red Barn murder and social history, crime and punishment, coinage, death, witchcraft. The museum holds the Gershon-Parker horology collection of nationally important timepieces.
It also houses the grisly Corder collection, amassed after the execution of William Corder in 1827 for the murder of Maria Martin in the Red Barn. "It's unbelievably gruesome," says heritage manager Alan Baxter. "We have a piece of his scalp; his death mask and a book bound in his skin."
Help at hand
22 staff - a mix of full-time and part-timers are split between Moyses Hall and West Stow Country Park and Anglo-Saxon Village, also operated by St Edmundsbury borough council. Baxter is heritage manager for both.
Budget St Edmundsbury council funds the museum, which also receives small grants from elsewhere. It recently gained a sizeable Heritage Lottery Fund grant to develop a discover your past scheme and forge links with the local community. Annual visits About 20,000.
Highlights of the collection
"One of my favourite pieces is a piece of medieval stained glass showing St Edmund with a star-shaped nimbus behind his head," says Baxter. The Corder material still draws visitors in, as do various objects relating to rural witchcraft, including a dead cat. It was an old Suffolk practice to protect buildings from fire by walling a cat into the foundations."
Survival tip
"To keep presenting slightly different attractions alongside the old favourites," Baxter says. The museum has started putting on temporary exhibitions in its biggest room. So far it has done Transformations, on the changing shape of women's fashions, and another tracing 1,000 years of Bury's market.
Sticky moment
"Corder may not have been a nice man, but he has some delightful descendants, some of whom are now based in Newcastle," says Baxter.
"Another side of the family made a claim for the return of all the Corder material. In 2007, we had to organise a tribunal to rule on the situation. It turned out that the other branch of the family were not direct descendents, so they lost the case… The Corder collection was not classed as human remains because objects had been made out of him."
On Cornhill, right in the centre of the ancient town of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
What
The museum is in an early medieval building dating from 1180. It's been a tavern (a serving girl reported seeing a devil there in the early 14th century), a 17th-century gaol and bridewell and, in the 19th century, a police station.
Opened "It's been used for museumy purposes for a long time," says heritage manager Alan Baxter, "but it was officially opened as a museum in 1899."
Collection
There's a lot on local history, including the Suffolk regiment, the infamous Red Barn murder and social history, crime and punishment, coinage, death, witchcraft. The museum holds the Gershon-Parker horology collection of nationally important timepieces.
It also houses the grisly Corder collection, amassed after the execution of William Corder in 1827 for the murder of Maria Martin in the Red Barn. "It's unbelievably gruesome," says heritage manager Alan Baxter. "We have a piece of his scalp; his death mask and a book bound in his skin."
Help at hand
22 staff - a mix of full-time and part-timers are split between Moyses Hall and West Stow Country Park and Anglo-Saxon Village, also operated by St Edmundsbury borough council. Baxter is heritage manager for both.
Budget St Edmundsbury council funds the museum, which also receives small grants from elsewhere. It recently gained a sizeable Heritage Lottery Fund grant to develop a discover your past scheme and forge links with the local community. Annual visits About 20,000.
Highlights of the collection
"One of my favourite pieces is a piece of medieval stained glass showing St Edmund with a star-shaped nimbus behind his head," says Baxter. The Corder material still draws visitors in, as do various objects relating to rural witchcraft, including a dead cat. It was an old Suffolk practice to protect buildings from fire by walling a cat into the foundations."
Survival tip
"To keep presenting slightly different attractions alongside the old favourites," Baxter says. The museum has started putting on temporary exhibitions in its biggest room. So far it has done Transformations, on the changing shape of women's fashions, and another tracing 1,000 years of Bury's market.
Sticky moment
"Corder may not have been a nice man, but he has some delightful descendants, some of whom are now based in Newcastle," says Baxter.
"Another side of the family made a claim for the return of all the Corder material. In 2007, we had to organise a tribunal to rule on the situation. It turned out that the other branch of the family were not direct descendents, so they lost the case… The Corder collection was not classed as human remains because objects had been made out of him."