Blandford
Town Museum
Founded: Not
sure Governance:
Independent Trust
Scope: Local
history Visited:
Summer 2016
The
volunteers
on duty at Blandford Museum weren't sure how to answer
my gentle enquiries about the history of the nice old
building that houses it. One said it used to be a
stables, the other that it was the workshop of the
Bastard brothers, the architects chiefly responsible for
rebuilding the small Dorset market town after the
catastrophic fire of 1731. Of course it could easily
have been both, but I was surprised they couldn't just
reel the answer off.
The
collection
is pretty much the usual sort of thing one would expect
(including a serpent! It doesn't get any better than
that) with the exception of the little display about the
Gurkhas and Nepalese culture which you discover tucked
away into a far corner of the upper floor: Blandford
owes that to the Royal Signals Corps who are
based over the hill from the old town centre. The museum
is all amiably random although I thought the
medieval corner and the nicely grim archaeological
stratigraphy display had a great deal of flair to them.
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