Totnes Museum: An Elizabethan Merchant’s House and Local History Museum
Site at a Glance
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- English
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- House
On this page8 sections
History
Totnes Museum is a local history museum in Totnes, South Devon, England, United Kingdom, housed in a merchant’s house built around 1575. The house dates to the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603), a period known as the Elizabethan era.
Totnes Town Council purchased the house in 1958 and restored it. It opened as Totnes Museum in 1961, having previously been called Totnes Elizabethan House and Museum. The building is Grade I listed, the highest category of listed-building designation in England, reserved for buildings of exceptional interest. The charitable Totnes Museum Trust runs the museum, whose collections and exhibitions address the town’s cultural, economic, and social history.
The museum also presents the story of Charles Babbage, a 19th-century English mathematician and inventor who spent his youth in Totnes and studied at King Edward VI Grammar School. He developed the Difference Engine, a mechanical calculator, and designed the Analytical Engine, a proposed mechanical computing machine, in collaboration with Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician and writer.
Remains
The museum occupies two buildings over three floors and contains twelve gallery rooms and a courtyard. Its buildings include the Elizabethan house, which retains many original features, while a garden lies at the rear.
House and galleries
The Elizabethan house
The house, built around 1575, forms part of the museum’s physical setting. Its surviving original features are preserved within a museum complex that also includes a second building.
Exhibition rooms and collections
The galleries include the Forehall, a kitchen exhibition, and the Babbage Room. The collections cover approximately 5000 BCE to the present and include early archaeological finds, coins minted in Totnes during Saxon times, Elizabethan artefacts, and Victorian ephemera. Saxon refers to the early medieval period in English history; Victorian refers to the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). Victorian ephemera are printed or written items originally intended for short-term use.
Archive and garden
Totnes Archive
Totnes Archive is located at the rear of the museum. Its holdings relate to Totnes, South Devon, and other connected subjects, and include books, microfiche sheets bearing miniature copies of documents, transcripts, photographs, and local newspapers dating from 1860. The material also supports research into local buildings and family history.
Herb garden
The rear garden contains herbs once found in Elizabethan gardens as well as other plants. Volunteers maintain it.
