Museum of Cambridge

rdf:langString Museum of Cambridge

rdf:langString The Museum of Cambridge, formerly known as the Cambridge & County Folk Museum, is a museum located in Castle Street in central Cambridge, England. It is housed in the former White Horse Inn, a Grade II listed 16th century former public house that closed in 1934. The Museum first opened in 1936, following a 1933 exhibition organised by the Cambridgeshire Federation of Women's Institutes, entitled 'A Festival of Olden Times, held in Cambridge's Guildhall. Queen Mary visited the museum in 1938 and donated two exhibits, a miniature table and a tea caddy, the following year. Reginald C Lambeth was the assistant curator in 1939. He wrote a series old articles in the East Anglian Magazine. In this 1939's annual report it stated that the collection had risen to over 1,900 exhibits. In 1945 it was reported The museum is housed in an old coaching inn the White Horse and the quaint rooms afford an ideal setting for the collection. The building will be required for a town improvement scheme and the museum committee will have to find a new (and it is hoped), permanent quarters in the near future. Enid Porter, a leading authority on Cambridgeshire culture, history, customs and beliefs and a pioneer of oral history, was Curator of the Museum from 1947 to 1976. In 1988 it was reported that the museum might have to close as it was running out of money. The museum presents the lives of the people of Cambridge and its surrounding area, the county of Cambridgeshire and the Fens from 1700 onwards. The collection includes more than 20,000 objects reflecting the social history of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire, including applied art, coins, costumes, decorative art, fine art, hobbies, law and order, medals, medicine, music, social history, textiles and toys. The museum also holds oil paintings by local artist Mary Charlotte Greene (1860-1951), a relative of author Graham Greene, as well as inn signs by another local artist, Richard Hopkins Leach (1794-1851). The museum also administers Capturing Cambridge, a website that crowd sources local history, documenting stories and memories across Cambridge and the surrounding area street by street. The museum is an independent charity, governed by a board of trustees. In 2020, as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum launched a fundraising campaign with the support of Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner. In May 2021, the museum announced the success of its fundraising campaign and re-opened to the public. The museum was shortlisted for the 2006 Gulbenkian Prize. On the 27 August 2021 the museum began a temporary exhibition looking into the town and gown split and its relationship with public spaces.