What are the opening hours?

Tuesday 10:30am - 4:30pm Wednesday 10:30am - 4:30pm Thursday 10:30am - 4:30pm Friday 10:30am - 4:30pm Saturday 10:30am - 4:30pm Sunday 11am - 3pm

North Hertfordshire Museum

Name: North Hertfordshire Museum
Address: Brand Street, Hitchin, SG51JE, GB
Telephone: 01462474554
Price range: $
Rating: 4.8

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North Hertfordshire Museum

The award-winning North Hertfordshire Museum is open to the public six days a week (Tuesday to Sunday

13/01/2025

🌋 The last time Mount Vesuvius erupted was in 1944, during the Second World War. This volcano normally erupts every year meaning now, it is overdue.

In this talk lunchtime talk our Education Curator, Cas Sanders, will be looking at the great eruption of 79 AD that buried Pompeii, studying first hand descriptions of the event, searching for clues to make predictions and asking what may happen next time.

📅 Tuesday 11 February, 12pm
🎟️ £6.50 per person

Don’t forget, you can present your ticket or receipt at our café on the day of the talk to receive 10% off your order!

🔗 Click the link below to book your space.
https://north-herts-museum.arttickets.org.uk/north-herts-museum/vesuvius-what-why-and-will-it-happen-again-672ce34de525f

11/01/2025

Today and tomorrow the Herts & Middlesex Wildlife Trust has a stand in the Terrace Gallery with lots of information about local wildlife and good places for family walks. Come in and say hello (while saying a sad goodbye to the Snowman) Here's Danny Barker from the Trust talking to one of our visitors.

11/01/2025

How many of these objects do you recognise and how much do you know about them?

🚒 It’s easy to walk straight under the fire engine hanging from the ceiling in our front entrance, or think that the dance sign in our dress up section is us not letting you jitterbug and jive (it really is an object, we promise!)

🦊 Have you stopped and noticed the incredible story of the criminal ‘Fox Twins’. When poaching illegally they made sure to never go together and, much to the frustration of the constabulary, would always provide alibis for each other before it was realised that twins have different fingerprints.

🏆 Or noticed The Tripoli Cup, made in the Second World War from gun shells. Soldiers played a football tournament while in Tripoli, Libya, and picked the names of famous clubs for their teams.

⭐️ Even the popular objects, the Great Bustard and his otter friend, the huge chemist shop and more, will be viewed in a different light after you join one of our Curators on a tour around the museum!

As only a small group, you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions and listen to an expert talk in detail about a range of objects we have on display.

The tour is on Thursday 6 February, 10-11am. Make sure you click the link below to book in 🔗
https://north-herts-museum.arttickets.org.uk/north-herts-museum/museum-tour-6752f69a6d210

10/01/2025

We've got an action shot this week!

Back in 1975, somewhere in the village of Graveley, this small group of firefighters bravely tackled a fire at a farm. The firefighters focus their efforts right at the centre of the building on fire, a single story building, a huge plume of smoke rises high into the sky.

❔Residents of Graveley we would love to hear from you – do you remember this farm fire? At which farm did this occur? Was the building destroyed? Was the damage widespread? Let us know and we can add your information to the object record!

09/01/2025

A bit of history from the Town Hall!

08/01/2025

Hands up who's had a stressful festive period 🙋‍♀️

or a boring one, or a busy one, or a massively rubbish one 🙋‍♀️

or it was great and you want me to just get to the point...

OK, no, that's fine, I will...

Join us for a relaxing collage art workshop and gain yourself some mindfulness points. You will create beautiful fabric flowers, pretty them up with paint and sparkles and take home your artwork for the whole family to admire.

Yoshie will guide you in making some wonderful art, all of your own, in an environment that can only soothe your weary soul (or not, for those who had a great holiday). Seriously, she decorates the table, smiles a lot and offers biscuits. You can't go wrong.

Remove the blue from your life and paint it into your flowers. All materials provided.

📅 Wednesday 22 January
🕤 7-9pm
🎟️ £30 per person

Book Now!

https://north-herts-museum.arttickets.org.uk/north-herts-museum/dancing-flowers-collage-workshop-6740595c1f6c1

08/01/2025

Our museum collects materials that are connected to every aspect of life in our area. One such unavoidable aspect is the need to go to the toilet! Alongside toilet paper and locally made toilets in our collection we have this unusual sign, this week’s Object of the Week!

🧻 The sign once hung at the urinals near Paynes Park Pig Market in Hitchin. It warns those with mischief in mind that Hitchin’s Urban District Council would prosecute any who damaged the urinals and would also offer £2 to anyone who gave information on offenders.

Removed and added to the museum collection in 1977 the sign was a survivor of a far earlier time and harks back to the work of an important local figure. It carries the name of William Onslow Times, the Clerk of the Council. Times was a local solicitor who left behind a huge impact on local history in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Serving the council for at least half a century and working as solicitor on many legal matters.

📄 Anyone studying Hitchin history of the era have almost certainly seen his name but would be far more familiar with him featuring on documents rather than signs to protect a urinal!

07/01/2025

🎨Last chance to get your tickets! 🎨

Not long now till we host our expert portrait artist, Paul Berryman. A previous contestant on Sky Arts ‘Portrait Artist of the Year’, Paul is a self-confessed portrait and life drawing ju**ie.

He’ll aim to have you producing the best faces you’ve ever drawn using his three-step process. This workshop is understandable and fun, but fast-paced with demos, presentations and exercises!

The workshop is a full day, all materials are provided and you get 10% off in our cafe for lunch.

📅 Thursday 16 or Saturday 18 January
🕤 10.45am - 4.15pm (with 30 minutes for lunch)
🎟️ £75 per person

Book now!

https://north-herts-museum.arttickets.org.uk/north-herts-museum/portrait-drawing-all-day-workshop-6723497872b33

Follow Paul on Facebook at Paul Berryman Artist

06/01/2025

It's slowly warming up in our exhibition gallery which means there's only one week left before The Snowman™ lands for the last time near you!

Get up close to 30 original animation cels from the 1982 film and see some early editions of the book ⛄

The exhibition closes on Sunday 12th January, it's free to the visit so don't miss out!

🔗 For more info, visit our website: www.northhertsmuseum.org

The Snowman

05/01/2025

Do you recognise any toys from your childhood in these images? 🎲

Perhaps you enjoyed a game of Escalado, or were given a mini sewing machine for Christmas one year. Another toy you may have noticed is a Xylophone with the branding of the popular British puppet, Sooty!

🧸 As the century passes toys take on the form or carry the branding of characters from books and television, children could play with versions of characters like Yogi Bear from American television, or Sooty on this little instrument!

Harry Corbett, the Yorkshireman behind the Sooty glove puppet, licensed this xylophone in the 1950s. This gave him enough money to leave his engineering job and concentrate on Sooty full time.

📚 Our Curator Matt Platt has been interested about the Tale of the Toy and will be delivering an evening talk on the subject at the end of this month! Join us and discover what toys have been spending their retirement years in our display cases, click the link below for more information!
https://north-herts-museum.arttickets.org.uk/north-herts-museum/a-tale-of-toys-evening-talk-672ce204139b5

04/01/2025

Why don't you try your hand at Monoprint this February? 🖌

This course from .prints will take you step by step through the different techniques and themes so you can go home with a new piece of artwork every week!

📅 Every Wednesday in February (starting 5 Feb)
🕤 7-9pm
🎟️ £99 per person

From botanical exploration, to creating pieces inspired by other artists, click the link below to see what you'll be doing each week and to book your tickets! 👇
https://north-herts-museum.arttickets.org.uk/north-herts-museum/discover-monoprint-4-week-course-672ccfbd48c7b

03/01/2025

A photograph behind the scenes at the banner painting workshop of Herbert Sharpe in Hitchin.

Herbert Sharpe himself works on a banner to the left of the photograph and has turned to look at the photographer. Other staff are working on their own banners through into the back of the shot.

Sharpe and his staff made banners for all manner of different organisations including trade unions, churches and masonic groups. Our collection holds a number of photographs of Sharpe banners.

01/01/2025

Happy New Year! How did you bring in the new year this time? A party perhaps? Maybe just watching a nice film on the tv? Perhaps you just decided to sleep through it all as we all waved goodbye to 2024.

Rewind time back to 1898 and the citizens of Hitchin would have been starting to gather their first thoughts on their best outfit and planning out who to dance with, as the old Hitchin Town Hall, the white building across the road from us, geared up for its New Year’s Soiree, to be staged on 12 January.

31/12/2024

New Year, a new month of events!

We’re sad to say goodbye to The Snowman™ but very excited to welcome the next exhibition, organised by our very own Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, ‘Stuff: things that make us human’. Keep an eye on our socials for more info!

🗣 Talks this month include a look at over 150 years of art, focusing on the scenery of our district in "North Herts as seen through the eyes of its artists, and a spotlight on toys in our display cases in ‘A Tale of Toys’.

📖 You may have noticed that the next round of toddler story time sessions are live and ready to book, the first of those is this month! We’ll have a lot of fun reading ‘The Gruffalo’, why don’t you join us?

✏️ All other events this month are creative workshops. With an all-day ‘Portrait Drawing’ workshop taught by Paul Berryman, a ‘Dancing Flowers’ collage workshop from Yoshie Allan AND the start of a six-week poetry course run by Shout or Whisper, you’re spoiled for choice!

For more info about January events, and to book, follow this link.
https://north-herts-museum.arttickets.org.uk/

28/12/2024

Join 'Master of Poetry' Tom on a 6-week journey where you'll look at all things poetry, with every session you'll be elevating your work!

📚 Holding a BA in English & American Literature, an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) and co-founding Shout or Whisper, Tom is an amazing person to learn from! His poems have been regularly featured in publications such as Ink, Sweat & Tears, Black Sunflowers and he was named one of 'The Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021'.

You can book for just one, multiple or all sessions in this course. Why not invest in yourself and your craft this new year?

Click the link below to see the whole schedule and book in! 🔗
https://north-herts-museum.arttickets.org.uk/north-herts-museum/shout-or-whisper-presents-poetry-in-depth-a-poetry-writing-workshop-672ccb25b8214

27/12/2024

A country scene of times past, playing out in a backdrop we would recognise today.

In this photo the Hertfordshire Hunt has gathered in Hitchin Marketplace. Its many riders, atop their horses wait, mostly looking away from the photographer. The hounds are visible among the legs of the horses. In the backdrop we see business advertising from the time, including the recognisable Freeman Hardy and Willis shoe shop sign, the shop now occupied by Dogs Trust.

Fox hunting as depicted here, with horse riders and scent hounds, took place all around the country for hundreds of years and as an area with a long agricultural history we saw many such hunts, until they were made illegal in 2005.

A number of photos in our collection show hunts gathered, or in pursuit. Back in 1875 F.P. Delme-Radcliffe of Hitchin Priory even wrote a book on the pastime.

26/12/2024

The next round of toddler music, story and face painting sessions are ready for you to book!

During these get-togethers we have a read of the book and a little sing-song, you can even dress-up to get extra immersed in the story 📖

The Gruffalo- 11 January
Hairy Maclary- 8 February
Five Minutes’ Peace- 8 March
Mog the Forgetful Cat- 5 April

These sessions are very popular so it may be worth securing your place now! Click the link in our below for more info 👇
https://north-herts-museum.arttickets.org.uk/

25/12/2024

It’s Christmas! Therefore, we are going festive for this week’s Object of the Week and are looking at this box of Christmas crackers.

Thought to date between 1960 and 1970 the box contains ten out of the original set of twelve crackers. The box explains that each cracker contains a hat and a novelty. Each cracker is decorated with the nursery rhyme character Little Miss Muffett, who is sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey.

The colourful box frontage depicts a Christmas scene with Father Christmas waving from his sleigh, pulled by a single reindeer. A couple step out of their idyllic home to wave as Father Christmas passes.

Did you know that the Christmas cracker, a popular feature of our Christmas table, is actually something only really used in the UK? The Victoria and Albert Museum explains that the Christmas cracker was patented in 1847 by the London baker Tom Smith. Inspired by a trip to Paris in which he saw the popularity of the bon bon, a sugared almond draped in a twist of tissue paper. Tom brought the idea back to his shop and to increase year round sales added a motto on the inside of the paper.

The 'pop' was said to have been inspired by the sound of a crackling log fire and this aspect of the cracker was perfected in the 1860s. Tom's company marketed crackers for use at a wide variety of occasions and his son added the elaborate hats and novelties into the design.

Address

Brand Street
Hitchin
SG51JE

Opening Hours

Tuesday	10:30am - 4:30pm
Wednesday	10:30am - 4:30pm
Thursday	10:30am - 4:30pm
Friday	10:30am - 4:30pm
Saturday	10:30am - 4:30pm
Sunday	11am - 3pm

Telephone

01462474554

Website

http://www.northhertsmuseum.org/

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Videos

Tonight we have been enjoying a talk by British soprano, Madeleine McConnell Smith, including live singing, she has been demystifying the world of opera for us! This is a clip of her singing a song from The Mikado. To see what other talks we have on visit https://north-herts-museum.arttickets.org.uk/

Our exhibition, Camden Town to Garden City: Gilman, Gore and Ratcliffe, is now closed, but we still have a tour on our YouTube channel for you to enjoy and the catalogue is available to purchase in our shop! Watch out for our next exhibition, Hitchin's Toy Story, which is opening on Saturday. To watch the tour in its entirety click the link below 👇 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvzoDzBP8Vc&t=662s Art Fund Michael Palin Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

In this short film Ros Allwood takes you on a tour of our exhibition, Camden Town to Garden City: Gilman, Gore and Ratcliffe, revealing secrets and offering fascinating insights along the way. You can still see the artwork in person until Sunday 30th June 2024, when the exhibition finishes. Even after its closing the catalogue will be available to buy in the museum shop. The tour can be viewed in its entirety on our YouTube channel, click the link below to watch now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvzoDzBP8Vc Art Fund Michael Palin

Check out some of the amazing work made at Yoshie Allan's last Kids Collage Workshop! She’s putting on another session during Half-Term week so the fun can continue, we’re looking forward to seeing even more ‘Hide & Seek’ masterpieces created 🎨 📅 Wednesday 29th May 🕤 Multiple timings available 🎟️ £8 per child There are limited spaces so book now with the link below! 👇 https://north-herts-museum.arttickets.org.uk/north-herts-museum/half-term-kids-hide-and-seek-collage-workshop-6643854ea6203

Coming up this afternoon...we have our After School Craft Club! Drop in anytime from 3pm-4:30pm and join us in creating some wiggly worms (as seen in the middle video) 🪱 ◽️ £1 entry ◽️ No need to book 🎨 We look forward to seeing all you creative people later on today! . . #kidscrafts #museum #hitchin #letchworth

Diane Arbus Exhibition - North Herts Museum

📸 The Diane Arbus exhibition from 2nd December until 25th February 📸 A rare opportunity to see work by one of the most original and influential photographers of the 20th century. Presented in partnership with Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, the exhibition draws from the remarkable collection of Arbus’s work in ARTIST ROOMS, featuring some of her most iconic black and white portraits. Entrance to the museum and exhibition are free! 👇 Click the link below for more info 👇 https://www.north-herts.gov.uk/exhibition-legendary-american-photographer-comes-north-herts

Diane Arbus Exhibition - North Herts Museum

📸 The new Diane Arbus exhibition from 2nd December 📸 A rare opportunity to see work by one of the most original and influential photographers of the 20th century. Presented in partnership with Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, the exhibition draws from the remarkable collection of Arbus’s work in ARTIST ROOMS, featuring some of her most iconic black and white portraits. Entrance to the museum and exhibition are free! 👇 Click the link below for more info 👇 https://www.north-herts.gov.uk/exhibition-legendary-american-photographer-comes-north-herts @nationalgalleries