Dartmouth Museum

Dartmouth Museum

Dartmouth Museum is to be found on the historic Butterwalk, in an outstanding example of a rich merchant’s house, built around 1640. The current collection covers Dartmouth’s history through 8 displays and exhibitions that address all aspects of the town’s history and its contribution, at key times, to our national story.  It’s popular with adult and children too, as each room has quizzes for 2 age levels, with prizes for successful completion!

The 8 exhibitions and displays include:

The social and geographical history of Dartmouth with particular focus on the town’s growth by reclaiming land from the river Dart from the 14^th to the 19^th century.

The maritime history of Dartmouth and the Dart from the Crusades to the modern day is explored with models, maps and explanatory panels, and contains a significant collection of ship models from across the ages.

The Mayflower exhibition brings to life the extraordinary story of the separatists who departed Dartmouth on their way to the New World in 1620.  With a twelve foot model of the ship at its centre, cut in half to expose the interior and contents, the exhibition explores the bravery and often dark and disturbing aspects of the story through a 15 minute film and explanatory panels.

The ceiling of the Jesse room is decorated with a plasterwork ‘Tree of Jesse’ (the genealogy of Jesus), believed to be the only surviving example of this once common religious symbolism, from the time of the Mayflower.

Thomas Newcomen was a Dartmouth inventor who in 1712, designed and built the first commercial atmospheric steam engine that fired the industrial revolution. His life in Dartmouth is described on a new video.  All the improvements from his design to Trevithick’s first locomotive engine in 1804 are illustrated in eight stunning model engines created by David Hulse: the award-winning model builder.

The impact of steam on the lives of the people and businesses on and around the Dart in the 19^th century is explored in an exhibition showing how steam came to the town, first through the steam-powered floating bridge, then iconic paddle steamers and the railway, and lastly cruise liners.  The lives of the coal lumpers who shifted the coal that created the steam power, is also described with eyewitness accounts of conditions of their work and the hardships they endured.

Victorian Dartmouth is seen through the eyes of Dartmouth ironmonger, self-taught scientist and collector William Henley, in a recreation of his study, containing items he collected, designed, painted and made.

The part Dartmouth played in the World Wars is covered in a display which includes a film that is unique to the Museum, and describes the preparations for D Day. Many other associated items and explanatory graphics boards show how the men and women on 500 ships that left Dartmouth on June 6^th 1944, trained in and around Dartmouth for the invasion of Normandy.