Ely Museum

We know that by the 17th Century, Bishop Peter Gunning, who was Bishop of Ely Cathedral between 1674 and 1684, set about tackling the issue of the former Bishops Gaol, previously in Barton that had fallen into a state of disorder and disrepair. You can read more about in our post here: http://bit.ly/2UX53GF

With considerable authority to maintain law and order in Ely, Gunning purchased a private house on the corner of what we now know as Lynn Road & Market Street in 1679 and set about creating a new gaol.

Following some remodelling and an extension, including the addition of a walled exercise yard, this building became the new Bishops Gaol.

After visiting the gaol in 1836, the Inspector of Prisons found Ely Gaol to be ‘most inefficient’ and the gaoler, Benjamin Barlow to be ‘respectable, but old and physically incompetent’. In that same year, an Act was passed to extinguish the secular jurisdiction of archbishops, and so the gaol was closed and prisoners moved on to Cambridge County Prison. Sadly, prisoners were also kept in terrible conditions at Ely Gaol, which also contributed to its eventual closure. You can read more about Bishop Matthias Mawson who oversaw a terrible period of the gaol’s history in our post here: http://bit.ly/2GJzQOQ

While sadly there are no pictures of the gaol as it originally was, we can see many reminders of the prisons who wiled away their time whilst in the gaol through the graffiti they left behind in the gaol Bishop Gunning commissioned.

In 1842, the Ely Mechanics Institute was established in the gaol which housed their meetings and their library. Their librarian, Mr Marshall Fisher, also lived in the building, and from 1849, Mr Fisher and another member, Mr Bard, kept their own museum in the building too! As an amateur scientist and enthusiastic collector of natural history artefacts, Mr Fisher curated and displayed his collections at the museum until his death in 1899, aged 92!

In 1904, many of the Diocesan records, which were originally stored in the tower of the Bishops Palace, now part of the King's Ely campus, by Bishop Alcock, were transferred to the Old Gaol and a custodian moved into the building to care for them and to provide a reading room. These archives were stored at the Old Gaol until 1962 when they were moved to their current location at the Cambridge University Library

From October 1973 until March 1974 the building was used as the headquarters of East Cambridgeshire District Council and by that summer, in July 1974, the first floor of the gaol was used by the City of Ely Council Chamber as office space with the cells used as storage rooms and the ground floor of the building used as the offices of the Registrar for births, deaths and marriages!

Did you know we sometimes get visitors who tell us about how they were married or registered the births of their children in the museum?

By 1995 the council had moved to new premises and plans were drawn to move the museum from our original High Street site to our current building.

Now with a larger building and more space, the collection at Ely Museum expanded and we were able to display more objects, as well as share the story of the Old Gaol with the public!

Did you know that the collections you see on display at Ely Museum today originate from Vernon Cross' passion for the arts & his love of curious things? As a local baker, talented ventriloquist and curio collector, Vernon Cross was successful and well respected businessman and councillor for Ely. You can learn more about Vernon Cross and his service during World War One in our post here: http://bit.ly/2WbJCi0

In January 2019, we shared the brilliant news that Ely Museum had been awarded a grant of £1.66 million from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for our project to unlock the potential of the Old Gaol!

We’re hoping to temporarily close the museum in September 2019, reopening in the autumn of 2020 with an amazing new museum which celebrates the history and people of the Fens in a building which showcases the beautiful historic features of the gaol, and also provides 21st century facilities and galleries! You can read more about our exciting announcement here: http://bit.ly/2vlBmQv and we hope to be able to share more plans and images of how the museum will look with you all soon!