Wessex Museums
Search
Close this search box.

Collections showcase

Our museums cover Dorset and Wiltshire, and hold world-class collections spanning archaeology, fine and decorative art, ethnography, social history, costume and textiles. Together we tell different chapters in the fascinating story of Wessex, from prehistoric times to today.

Collections showcase at Salisbury Museum. Ash Mills

Recent additions

A small toy that took the world by storm.
Read More

Polly Pocket Toys
Museum & Art Swindon

A carved king on horseback.
Read More

Ivy Street chess piece -
The Salisbury Museum

'What started as a challenge, became a labour of love'
Read More

Men of Iron Photographs -
Poole Museum

Brown and May were agricultural engineers with a large works in Estcourt Street, Devizes. Read more about this 1/10th scale model.
Read More

Brown & May steam engine -
Wiltshire Museum

A taxidermy female albino badger.
Read More

Albino Badger
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

Search the Virtual Collection

Search the database featuring over 250,000 collection items from Wessex Museums’ partners.
Virtual Collection

Ancient Wessex

Find out more about the extraordinary ninth century AD bejewelled aestel found by metal detectorists!
Read More

The Warminster Jewel
The Salisbury Museum

The finest example of Bronze Age gold-working ever found - sheet gold intricately decorated with geometric lines.
Read More

Bush Barrow lozenge
Wiltshire Museum

One of the most incredible Bronze Age finds in Britain. The dagger handle is decorated with thousands of microscopic gold studs.
Read More

Bush Barrow dagger
Wiltshire Museum

Mystery boat carved from one massive tree trunk.
Read More

Iron age log boat
Poole Museum

This flint arrowhead was made thousands of years ago and discovered during excavations on the former Moortown Aerodrome site in Canford Park.
Read More

Petit tranchet arrowhead
Poole Museum

Macabre and mysterious - the mouthpiece of a Bronze Age musical instrument made from a human femur bone.
Read More

Macabre musical instrument
Wiltshire Museum

A hoard of 4,000 Roman coins, found with a little help from a cow!
Read More

East Harnham hoard
Ths Salisbury Museum

Find out how this large Roman storage jar was used.
Read More

Highworth Roman pot
Museum & Art Swindon

Find out more about the Fordington mosaic!
Read More

Fordington mosaic
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

The god of metalworking and fire.
Read More

Vulcan figurine
Wiltshire Museum

Tiny glass head tells a tale of revelry and ritual dating back to Roman times.
Read More

Roman glass head
Poole Museum

Creative Wessex

This stained-glass window by John Piper was commissioned for Wiltshire Museum in 1981.
Read More

Piper Window
Wiltshire Museum

A rare oil painting captures the launch of the Abeona in 1794.
Read More

The Abeona of Poole
Poole Museum

This stylised and richly coloured painting of sunflowers in front of a window was painted by Elsie Barling.
Read More

Sunflower painting
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

This beautifully illustrated log was kept by Thomas Dyke, a master mariner from Poole.
Read More

Log of the Cora Greenock
Poole Museum

Rex Whistler, a talented British artist, painted his friend Edith Olivier at her home, Daye House.
Read More

The Daye House, Wilton Park
The Salisbury Museum

Tucked into the corner of the Library of Lydiard House Museum is a small work by John Piper, Bolingbroke at Lydiard Tregoze.
Read More

Bolingbroke
Lydiard House Museum

Find out more about this oil painting by James Fry.
Read More

Seascape, Rocky Shoreline
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

A masterpiece of the high seas! Painted by Bernard Finnegan Gribble he is known as one of Poole’s most successful and prolific artists.
Read More

The Plague Ship
Poole Museum

A small dog exploring big ideas.
Read More

Small standing dog
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

A Dorset potter known for his unique style.
Read More

Batterham’s studio pottery Dorset Museum & Art Gallery​

In The Salisbury Museum’s collection is this distinctive money box.
Read More

Verwood money box
The Salisbury Museum

Wessex people

Mrs Ridout and the Coombe Bissett. Discover the little-known story of Maria Ridout and her Express carrier
Read More

Mrs Ridout
The Salisbury Museum

A beautiful Iron Age mirror decorated with mystical Celtic art.
Read More

Portesham mirror
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

Stunning orange and gold beads - but who was the Lady with the Amber Necklace?
Read More

Amber necklace
Wiltshire Museum

Over 1,000 lost and discarded objects have been discovered in the medieval water channels that once ran through the streets of Salisbury.
Read More

Drainage collection keys
The Salisbury Museum

In the 1920s women’s football was a flourishing sport, read about Swindon star Fanny Williams.
Read More

Fanny Williams' football boots
Museum & Art Swindon

These tongs were repurposed from smashed machinery.
Read More

Swing Riot tong
The Salisbury Museum

Crime and punishment in 19th century Devizes.
Read More

Devizes prison door
Wiltshire Museum

Who sent the postcard after Longfleet St Mary's defeat?
Read More

Anonymous postcard
Poole Museum

Cape in suffragette colours thought to belong to women's rights campaigner, Millicent Fawcett.
Read More

Millicent Fawcett's cape
The Salisbury Museum

Commemorating an Eighteenth century murder with a dramatic story and evidence of Jewish solidarity in Wessex.
Read More

Medal of John Curtis
The Salisbury Museum

The burial of the early medieval Swallowcliffe Princess is one of the most important displays in the Wessex Gallery at The Salisbury Museum.
Read More

Swallowcliffe satchel mount
The Salisbury Museum

Enterprising Wessex

Rugged, reliable, and relatively affordable this two-stoke outboard motor was made in Poole.
Read More

British Seagull -
Poole Museum​

The child’s coat was made in about 1916 from red material cut from the father’s tunic worn as a soldier in the Boer War.
Read More

The child's red Boer coat
The Salisbury Museum

Upcycling in the 1940s - old fabrics given new life!
Read More

Patchwork dressing gown
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

A 60s icon still made in Poole
Read More

Neo lava lamp
Poole Museum

The first work-to-home phone in Britain.
Read More

Cunnington's telephone
Wiltshire Museum

A horse-drawn lifesaver.
Read More

Shand Mason & Co fire engine
Poole Museum

Artificial limbs were manufactured at the Great Western Railway’s Swindon Works.
Read More

Artificial limb
STEAM Museum

From a fisherman's tool to a beachcomber's treasure!
Read More

Glass fishing floats
Poole Museum

Wessex land and water

Find out more about the extraordinary ninth century AD bejewelled aestel found by metal detectorists!
Read More

Great north diver
Poole Museum

Deep dive through time and read more about this fossil shellfish.
Read More

Fossil shellfish
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

The pliosaur was the largest marine reptile that ever lived.
Read More

Weymouth Bay pliosaur
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

Alfred Russel Wallace's bird collection aids study of evolution.
Read More

Birds of paradise
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

There is more to algae than meets the eye!
Read More

Filamentous green algae
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

Measuring just over 2 metres this spectacular spiralling tusk once belonged to a male Narwhal.
Read More

Narwhal Tusk
Poole Museum

Hares are famous for being very energetic and having ‘boxing’ matches with one another.
Read More

Boxing hares
Wiltshire Museum

This skin of a reticulated Python is over three metres long.
Read More

Python skin
Poole Museum

This keystone was an important part of the canal bridge as it is the focus for the forces in the arch.
Read More

Keystone from John St Bridge
Museum & Art Swindon

This fossilised mammoth molar was found in Blandford Forum and dates to around one million years ago.
Read More

Mammoth molar
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

Wessex myth and legend

Mysterious and menacing mask, part of traditional Dorset folk culture.
Read More

Dorset Ooser
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

Find out more about the magnificent moustachioed man!
Read More

Swash Channel wreck
Poole Museum

Poole Museum's Bollan Cross was found during the excavation of a medieval boatyard in Poole during the 1980s.
Read More

Bollan cross
Poole Museum

Wessex and the wider world

The grave of the Amesbury Archer is one of the most important discoveries in Europe.
Read More

Amesbury Archer
The Salisbury Museum

This small bag, also known as an incense purse, probably dates from the end of the Qing Dynasty.
Read More

Chinese drawstring bag
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

Salisbury Museum has a major collection of pilgrim badges and souvenirs.
Read More

St Thomas of Canterbury pilgrim badge

On the 27 July 1942 a high explosive bomb landed near the GWR electrical substation.
Read More

WWII explosive bomb tail fin
Museum & Art Swindon

This type of chair – known as the Salisbury chair – is unique to the city. There are only around 60 other surviving examples.
Read More

Mayoral chair
The Salisbury Museum

This music box was made in Switzerland around mid-19th century.
Read More

Music box
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

During the 12th and 13th centuries, Limoges was a major centre for production of enamelled objects, which were exported all over Europe.
Read More

Limoges enamel cross
The Salisbury Museum

These two silver items were gifts to a man who overcame war adversity to lead a full working and social life; Herbert Morley Bird.
Read More

Inkwell & cigarette case
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery

Search the virtual collection
Back to home page

Sawfish are also called carpenter sharks...but they are rays, not sharks!

There’s also a species called a sawshark, but that’s, well, a shark!

Back

What the heck is a lek?

Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.

Road Runner!

The great bustard has a dignified slow walk but tends to run when disturbed, rather than fly.

Belly Buster!

The hen-bird on display at The Salisbury Museum was one of the last great bustards to be eaten in the town!

Skip to content