Hadleigh & Thundersley Museum

First, I have to say the existence of a bricks and mortar local museum is probably a long way in the future unless some noble person steps forward to donate or leave a suitable property for the benefit of the community. Such things happened in Victorian times, but rarely since.

However, if you have a spare building or several hundred thousand pounds available for such a purpose, please contact this Archive and we will see what we can do.

Rayleigh did it, so why not Hadleigh and Thundersley?

In the meanwhile, AGES Archaeological & Historical Association has created a virtual museum and is gradually populating it with local finds.

Residents have for years wanted a museum so that their children can better understand their local heritage, but real museums are expensive to manage and all too soon run out of space. Most parishes have to rely on occasional mentions in the larger museums in the wider area. (Southend Museum has a small, but very interesting exhibition of finds from Hadleigh Castle, but there is no display space to include many other finds originating from Hadleigh or Thundersley. They are hidden away in the museum’s archaeology store and very few local people ever get to see them).

Some local finds can be seen on-line in AGES’  virtual museum which provides a repository for images of local artefacts until the dream of a local museum building becomes a reality.

This virtual museum is at a very early stage and very incomplete, but thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund “Sharing Heritage” grant in 2015, AGES continues to gather both a few photos from local museums to add to the virtual museum and examples of their own finds for their pop-up museum displays at local fairs.

AGES Archaeological & Historical Association