Canterbury Heritage Museum
The Heritage Museum building dates from 1373 and is on Stour Street just off Canterbury High Street. It is quite large, well worth a visit and, for me, second only to Canterbury Cathedral ⇐. The museum is child friendly but there is a charge for adults and it is not open all year round, so please see the website ⇒
For a closer view of an image please left-click once and then again.
First a little history.
The following two artists impression are really from the Roman Museum (a few minutes walk away on Butchery St), but help to complete the picture.
Roman Canterbury AD 150
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Roman Canterbury AD 300
And, back to the Heritage Museum.
Anglo-Saxon Canterbury AD 700
It seems the new locals put aside bijou for hairy Saxon style, although it looks like the early cathedral can be seen in the distance.
Just a few of the items on display:-
6th Century Anglo-Saxon Bronze Brooch
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The Normans came along in the the 11th Century and had a preference for stone.
Medieval Mazer
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And armour.
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Elizabethan Soldier – A “Buffs” Pikeman 1572
The Buffs are a long-standing regiment originating in Kent and garrisoned at Canterbury. Once known as the 3rd Light Foot but now known as the Royal East Kent Regiment. Referred to as the Buffs because of the buff colouring of their sleeves.
In 1858 whilst stationed at Malta, Lieutenant John Cotter, Adjutant of the 2nd Buffs, would shout “Steady, The Buffs!”, a shout which was popularised by Rudyard Kipling and entered common use.
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Invicta Steam Locomotive
Invicta was built at the Stephensons Works, delivered and driven by Edward Fletcher and opened the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway in 1830.
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Mary Tourtel who Created Rupert the Bear in 1920.
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Bagpus and Friends
Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin created Bagpus, Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog, the Clangers, Tottie: The Story of a Dolls House and The Pogles family in a converted cowshed in Blean near Canterbury using the company name Smallfilms ⇒.
There are more of these exhibits at this museum and at the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood ⇐ (East London).
Tottie: The Story of a Dolls House
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Oliver Postgate’s Canterbury Chronicle
And more from amazing Canterbury later.
Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood: Ancient and Modern and Clangers
22 pics. These Chinese Rock Gardens were gifts from the Chia Ch’ing Emperor of China (1796-1820) to the French Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is said that the ship carrying these gifts was captured by an English warship. The English offer to return the rock gardens to the French, after the 1802 Treaty of Amiens, was declined.
It is recorded that gardens arrived at the East India Company’s Museum in 1809 and passed to the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in 1880 and now displayed at the V & A Museum of Childhood.
They are in remarkably good condition and worth looking at the detail (click on the image and then again to magnify).
For more about the Museum and pictures of the more vintage toys, dolls houses and other items, please click here ⇐. For their website, events and services please click here ⇒.
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Dolls and Soft Toys
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Paddington Bear
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The Snowman, Dogtanian, Sooty, Sweep and Soo
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Bagpus
And, the singing mice.
The mice liked to sing so much that they would not work otherwise, not nohow.
They also like to play tricks on Professor Yaffle.
Professor Yaffle
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The Pogles
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AND THE :-.
The Clangers live on their own small planet, communicate in mellifluous whistles and eat blue string pudding.
Soup Dragon, Clangers and Froglets
They also like soup from the soup wells tended by the friendly Soup Dragon.
Small Clanger and Tiny Clanger
There are many characters in the Clangers, these are just a few.
A fuller understanding of British consanguineous eccentricity (i.e. as mad as knitting fog) might be obtained from taking a look at Bagpus, Clangers, Portland Bill, Dangermouse, Magic Roundabout (original version) and Shaun the Sheep (especially) on YouTube .
So, it’s goodnight from him,
..and it’s goodnight from ‘im.
Freed From Time 