The Curtis Museum in Alton

Alton, Hampshire

Alton is a historic market town and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of the English county of Hampshire. It had a population of 16,584 at the 1991 census and is administered by East Hampshire district council. It is located on the source of the River Wey and is the highest town in...

, is a local history

Local history

Local history is the study of history in a geographically local context and it often concentrates on the local community. It incorporates cultural and social aspects of history...

 museum in Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

The museum was founded by Dr William Curtis (1803–1881) in 1865. It is managed by the Museum & Arts Service of Hampshire County Council

Hampshire County Council

Hampshire County Council is the county council that governs the majority of the county of Hampshire in England. It provides the upper tier of local government, below which are district councils, and town and parish councils...

 and is near the Allen Gallery.

Displays

It contains a wide range of artefacts and displays including:

• Prehistoric tools
• Roman
  Ancient Rome
  Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
  
   bowls and other material, including a cup found at Selborne
  Selborne
  Selborne is a village in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is south of Alton. It will be just within the extreme northern boundary of the proposed South Downs National Park, which is due to take effect in mid-2010....
  
  
• The Anglo-Saxon
  Anglo-Saxons
  Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...
  
   Alton buckle
• Artefacts from the Battle of Alton
  Battle of Alton
  The Battle of Alton , of the First English Civil War, took place on 13 December 1643 in the town of Alton, Hampshire, England. There, Parliamentary forces serving under Sir William Waller lead a successful surprise attack on a winter garrison of Royalist infantry and cavalry serving under the Earl...
  
   (1643), a battle in the English Civil War
  English Civil War
  The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
  
  
• The "Jane Austen
  Jane Austen
  Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
  
   Trail"
• The tale of Sweet Fanny Adams
  Fanny Adams
  Fanny Adams was a young English girl murdered by solicitor's clerk Frederick Baker in Alton, Hampshire. The expression "sweet Fanny Adams" refers to her and has come, through British naval slang, to mean "nothing at all".-Murder:On 24 August 1867 at about 1.30 pm, Fanny's mother, Harriet Adams,...
  
  , who was murdered locally in 1867
• Hop picking and brewing

Closure threat

As of 2010, both the Curtis Museum and the Allen Gallery are under threat of closure, following their receipt of an email to that effect from the Museum & Arts Service.

External links

• Curtis Museum
• Allen Gallery