Falconer Museum, Forres, Moray

The Falconer Museum in Forres, north-east Scotland, first opened in 1871 and is named after two local brothers, Hugh and Alexander, who both gave money through a bequest to support its development.

But Hugh's contribution extends far beyond his financial gift, as he was a major figure in 19th-century geology, botany and palaeontology and a friend of Charles Darwin.

Hugh's importance to the museum is immediately apparent as you enter the building. Beyond the shop and reception to your left and right, is his bust, in the middle of the entrance into the ground floor gallery. The accompanying text provides a nice introduction to Hugh and the museum, which reopened late last year after a £662,000 redevelopment.

For Hugh's full story, visitors have to go upstairs to the room dedicated to his life and work. Its key element is a 14-minute film that tells how his upbringing in Forres provided the inspiration for his interest in the natural sciences.

Later, while studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, he attended geology lectures given by Robert Jameson, who had taught Darwin. Falconer became an assistant surgeon in Bengal with the British West India Company in 1830.

As the film says, "Forres seems a long way from the heat and dust of India", but it was on the sub-continent where he spent many years examining fossils and plants. Here he developed an important theory called punctuated equilibrium and may have made the first discovery of a fossil ape. Many of the specimens he collected are at London's Natural History Museum and his botanical writings are at Kew. Forres has a proportion of his collection.

Hugh was born in February 1808 and when I visited the museum the room dedicated to him was covered in cards wishing him a happy 200th birthday. Created by local children as part of a competition, there were also many other cards on the ground floor, pinned up on walls and surrounding the Hugh Falconer bust.

But despite the cards and bust, Falconer is not the main interest downstairs, where the focus is on local history. The problem for many similar museums is choosing which objects to display from wide-ranging and disparate collections.

Some, such as the recently opened local history gallery at the Lightbox in Woking, choose to tell a few key stories in detail. The Falconer Museum has gone the other way, and features a large number of objects across a wide variety of themes.

Visitors first encounter Law and Order, then The Happiest Days looking at schooling, followed by a display about sport. On the other side of the room subjects covered include Spiritual Life, Health, Keeping it Clean and Leisure, Recreation and Public Entertainment.

Most of the showcases are packed with objects, but are usually easy to follow, with the text often picking up on key objects. "On the bottom you can see the blood-chilling mantrap used by estates for catching trespassers," says a panel in the Law and Order display.

You are sometimes left wanting a bit more information: a label by a pistol says that the "last known dual took place in Aberdeenshire and involved a local bank manager and his customer". Very interesting, but was this the last dual in Scotland, the UK, the world? There were a couple of other times the text left me hanging slightly and I was a bit baffled by the relevance of all the objects in the Spiritual Life display.

Visitor comment books are not always that enlightening, but among the "very interesting" and "nice objects" contributions, one visitor was close to the truth: "First class, but could do with more labels".

But whether labelled or not, the artefacts are used to trigger reminiscences and give little snippets of local history and they do this effectively.

The text for the Happiest Days displays sums up the approach nicely: "These objects will evoke memories for some people, perhaps of the school sports field, science lab or the classroom. Inkwells, pen nibs that refused to work properly, and the tawse, the instrument of correction feared yet experienced by many people - all are to be found here."

Upstairs on the balcony overlooking the ground floor displays, the story of Torres continues. Subjects covered include everything from early settlers through to technology and industry. There are also displays on two elements that form the lifeblood of many largely rural communities: the post office, which features a fantastic postal sorting bench, and the local newspaper, the Forres Gazette.

The displays provide good links between the past and the present, something often forgotten in local history museums. The education section talks about the first school in Forres in 1582, but then goes on to discuss how the town has expanded and now needs three primary schools and a secondary school. Similarly, the part about formation of the Forres Cycling Club in 1938 says that club's rides are now "open to all, even non-members".

This points to strong ties with the local community and the museum has what appears to be a vibrant Friends' group that has nearly 100 members.

The organisation, which contributed nearly £30,000 to the revamp, has led the development of an oral history project, which can be heard online and in the museum. Some of the recordings are great, but in a museum dominated by one person, it would be nice to have some detailed biographical information about each contributor as a way of finding out a bit more about the area's other characters.

David Morgan sounds particularly interesting. He remembers his time as a local journalist reporting on the "Political Dog", who used to growl whenever he heard Margaret Thatcher's name, a reaction shared by many non-canines.

Perhaps the Friends' next project could be to publish a guide to the museum, as there isn't one at the moment unless you count a two page offering from Moray Council. Impressively though, this is available in English, Gaelic, Spanish, German, Italian, French and Dutch and can be downloaded from the council's website.

Forres seems a proud town, and has prominent signs proclaiming awards for everything from Keep Britain Tidy to Best Scottish Pie.

Numerous articles in the Forres Gazette are similarly proud of the revamped museum, and with good reason. It uses a wide range of objects to tell the town's history, and combines this with the story of a local man who, although he made his mark thousands of miles from Forres, will always be best remembered here.