'The Thames Mudlark'
September 2020 - January 2021 For the re-opening of the museum in September, the museum is pleased to host a display on mudlarking, featuring items from the collection of enthusiastic local retired mudlarker and author Graham du Heaume. Discover a lost world of the everyday and the exotic, ranging from the Medieval to the Victorian. Knives, keys to the unknown, padlocks and horseshoes, a Georgian love token, a bearded bottle, a British Bulldog revolver, perhaps cast into the river after deeds unremembered... All were preserved, deep in the anaerobic mud - now they see the light of the modern day. |
"WHAT WE WORE IN THE WAR"
A New Costume Display until January 2021 A commemoration of the 75th anniversary of VE day. Come and see our new display. It’s a mixture of uniforms from the WVS and the FANYS (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry), two items of Land Girl clothing, a fine wool day dress, a ‘parachute silk’ blouse, a WW2 Red Cross apron and some very roomy cotton bloomers. Ration books and identity cards help to set the scene. Local photographs add to the sense of history, as there are several views of Henfield High Street taken on VE Day itself, 8th May 1945. A splendid photograph captures nurses and the Women’s Land Army marching up the High Street on this day. I wonder if the Land Army uniform in the case was being worn in the picture? Typically for our wonderful museum collection, I have been able to include a copy of the Parish magazine from June 1945 detailing the VE Day celebrations in Henfield. This is the essence of Henfield Museum. The clothes, the photographs and the community records all there to be enjoyed by us 75 years later. Stephanie Richards Curator of Costume |
![]() Uniforms from WW2. Image: Henfield Museum (CC BY-NC-SA)
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ROVING DISPLAY CASE: 'Flying Machines' - Henfield and the Age of the Stagecoach
2020 - 2021 An image conjured of the black of the night, 'when their approach was announced by the bugle, and they were lighted up by a number of lamps, and seeming to bear down upon you like a big ball of fire...' Discover the world of highwaymen, rivalry and accidents, the aggravation of turnpike gates, the sport of coaching and Henfield's role as a coaching stop in the golden age and romantic coaching revival of Jem Selby and Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt... Featured at the Henfield Haven from February 2020, this display is currently located in the museum during the Covid-19 pandemic. |