BEDFORD MUSEUM

With its emphasis clearly focused on the local community the Social History collections reflect both the home and working environments of the people of north Bedfordshire. The collections of some 20,000 items cover the wide range of domestic, corporate, military and agricultural life as well as local crafts and industries.

The lives of earlier inhabitants of north Bedfordshire are interpreted through the Archaeology collections. They range from the flint tools and hand axes of the Palaeolithic to the more recent past in Medieval times. The museum holds a good numismatics collection of coins, tokens, jettons, medals and medallions

The geology collections reveal the local rocks and fossils beneath our feet. These include the well-known coiled shells of ammonites and the spectacular giant marine reptiles of the Jurassic seas.

The natural history collections include the birds, mammals, insects and plants to be found in the county. These are displayed in cases representing the habitats in which they would normally be found.

The Bedford Modern School display contains information on the origin of the museum as a school collection. It includes natural history specimens from the county as well as information on some of the individual collectors who contributed to the Museum’s collections. This area also contains a small number of specimens collected from other countries by former pupils of Bedford Modern School.

The Ethnography and Foreign Archaeology collections mostly originate from the collections of the Bedford Modern School, where parents and old boys were encouraged to donate material from other cultures.

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