Project News - Official-Opening
The musuem is now open to visitors

For details about this project please email
Anna McDowell or write to the address below.

Gold Hill Museum Project Manager
Gold Hill Museum & Garden
Gold Hill
Shaftesbury
Dorset
SP7 8JW

Project update

After years of planning the complete refurbishment of Shaftesbury’s Gold Hill Museum, including the creation of the new functions’ room, is now finished.  The grand reopening ceremony took place taking place on Thursday 7th July at 12 noon. Leonora Schafarik, the niece of the museum’s founder Noel Toulon Porter, is the special guest invited to cut the ribbon to reopen the building to the public.

Invitees where all those who helped to finance the project, volunteers who worked on the project and contractors. Guests included the Mayor of Shaftesbury, Sam Hunt and Claire Hyne from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The seven display rooms are dedicated to a specific subjects, including the Early Settlement; Agricultural Trade & Markets; The Fire Service with the 1744 fire engine, probably the oldest in Dorset; Cottage Industries, with Dorset Buttons & Domestic Life; Education, Childhood & Entertainment, Shaftesbury’s symbolic Byzant amongst other topics.

The impressive new 40-seater Garden Room, for functions and meetings, overlooking the museum’s garden, is already receiving enquires for bookings.  This, together with the much-enlarged library, will prove to be valuable facilities for many in the region.

Project Details

This project has enabled us to turn the Gold Hill Museum in to a history centre. The new exhibition covers seven rooms in the two Grade II listed buildings one of which used to be a priest's house. A new two story extension holds the local history library and a dedicated room for educational visits, lectures, workshops and other events.

This project has enabled the Shaftesbury & District Historical Society to:

• Create a learning space and function room with a kitchenette for school visits, group visits, workshops, demonstrations, lectures and events
• Improve library facilities and create work/study space for people to study their local history
• Vastly improve the exhibition which will tell the story of the history of Shaftesbury and villages around the town
• Create dedicated space for temporary exhibitions
• Increase the storage space for objects and artifact by 20%