Newton Abbot Museum

22/10/2026

Looking for things to do this October half-term? Visit Newton Abbot Museum! From spooky mysteries to Tudor fashion, there’s plenty to discover!

👻 Haunted Objects (£5 per person) - Sat 31 Oct, 5 – 6.30pm | Booking required – Join us for a spooky puzzle adventure perfect for families, puzzle-lovers and ghost-hunters aged 8+.

👗 Talk: A Deep Dive Beneath the Skirts of a Wealthy Tudor Lady with Rosemary Griggs (Free) - Wed 28 Oct, 11am - 1pm | Booking required

🎃 Halloween Trail – Solve Newton’s creepy clues to discover the secret password and unlock a FREE Halloween sticker from the front desk!

✏ Twilight Sketching (Free) - Mon 26 Oct, 4 - 6pm | drop-in

🐭 More trails to explore! We have a selection of family-friendly trails to keep curious minds busy, including our Town Trail, Mice’s Fairy Holiday and the Great Butterfly & Moth Hunt.

📅 Museum opening hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 9.30am–4.30pm
🎟️ Museum entry is FREE!

For details and to book tickets, visit museum-newtonabbot.org.uk/whats-on

Find out about our opening days, resources and accessibility here: museum-newtonabbot.org.uk/visiting

Subscribe to our newsletter to learn about our upcoming events, activities and exhibitions: newtonabbotmuseum.eo.page/sds3w

21/10/2026

✨ We’re delighted to announce that Mrs Rosemary Griggs has sponsored our Tudor Dress Hook!

Rosemary explains why she chose to sponsor it:

💬 “Of all the wonderful objects preserved in our museum, this one means most to me. I write about women who lived in Devon in Tudor times and study and recreate the clothes they wore. I love this beautiful dress hook because it has a story to tell, not only of a fashion wealthy women adopted to lift their skirts revealing luxurious fabric beneath, but of the woman who lost it so long ago.

We don’t know for sure who she was, or where she was headed when it fell from her skirts to be rediscovered in a field in Ogwell. But one day I’ll weave her into a story. Thank you Newton Abbot Museum for keeping these important connections with local people of the past alive for us.”

A huge thank you to Rosemary for supporting the Museum and helping us preserve these connections with our local past!

💚 Could an object in our collection have a special meaning for you? Through our Sponsor an Object scheme, you can adopt an object for 12 months, helping us care for Newton Abbot’s heritage.

📧 Email [email protected] or pop into the Museum to find out more.

20/10/2026

💚 Join the Friends of Newton Abbot Museum and enjoy FREE talks! 💚

Do you love local history? Become a Friend and support your local museum while enjoying some fantastic benefits!

Why become a Friend?

📚 Free talks – Enjoy fascinating talks on a wide range of local history subjects, with tea, coffee and biscuits included!

📰 Twice-yearly newsletter – Keep up to date with our latest developments, exciting projects and museum news.

🛍️ Museum Gift Shop discount

❤️ Support your local museum – Your membership helps us care for our collections and develop new projects.

A little more about the membership:
🎟️ £20 a year per person (that's £2.50 for a talk!) | Non-members pay £5 per talk
If you’d like to become a Friend, please email [email protected] for an application form and payment details.

📅 Members and non-members can book on this season's talks via this link: tinyurl.com/FriendsNATalks

More information can be found on our website: www.museum-newtonabbot.org.uk/be-a-friend

📸 Images: Agatha Christie (Creative Commons license, colourised), Powderham Castle (Creative Commons license), Isambard Kingdom Brunel (Creative Commons license)

19/10/2026

🗺 Today's is a map of Devon, showing most of the major routes between towns and the settlements these roads connected.

Interestingly the counties of Somerset and Dorset are referred to as “Somersetshire” and “Dorsetshire”, reflecting the age of the map as both of these counties are more frequently referred to without the “shire” suffix today. Devon itself is still sometimes referred to as “Devonshire” as in the map.

Do you have any guesses as to when this map was produced?

16/10/2026

📸 – Bank Street, Newton Abbot (undated)

Following on from last week’s announcement about our photographic archive going online, we’re sharing another glimpse of Newton Abbot’s past!

This week’s photograph takes us back to Bank Street, looking towards the Passmore Edwards Library and Technical School. In the foreground, we can see an area of demolition, with trucks parked in front of the impressive building.

Look closely and you’ll spot familiar shop signs, including Oliver’s, Eastman's and Wills’s Gold Flake ci******es. It’s a reminder of how much our town centre has changed over the years.

📷 We’re working to make more of Newton Abbot Museum’s photographic archive available online through South West Collections Explorer, helping everyone discover and explore the town’s history: tinyurl.com/SWCollectionsExplorer

💬 Do you recognise any of the shops, or know what was being demolished here? We’d love to hear your memories!

Newton Abbot Library

15/10/2026

🐍Due to popular demand, we’ve added more Curious Creatures sessions with Frazie from Frazoo on Saturday 24 October🦎

Join Frazie for a fun and fascinating hands-on animal handling session, where you'll get to meet a mix of incredible reptiles and invertebrates. You might even be brave enough to gently hold some! 😮

Discover fascinating facts and get a closer look at some animals you might not normally get the chance to meet.

📅 Saturday 24th October

45min sessions:
⏰ 10am - 10.45am
⏰ 11am - 11.45am
⏰ 12pm - 12.45pm

🎟 £5 per child, accompanying adult - FREE
Please Note: No children under 4 and children under 13 must be accompanied by an adult.

Book tickets: www.eventbrite.com/e/2003193012224?aff=oddtdtcreator

🌐 Check our 'What's On' page for more upcoming events: museum-newtonabbot.org.uk/whats-on

14/10/2026

🏗️ Heritage Store Update: Progress on Site!

We’re pleased to share that the foundations and substructure of the extension are now complete, and drainage works beneath the building have been installed and approved. The blockwork walls are also progressing, with scaffolding now in place to help the next phase of construction get underway.

The ramp substructure is well underway, and the site’s permanent welfare facilities are now installed and operational.

🔨 What’s next? Over the coming weeks, work will focus on completing the blockwork, installing the roof, progressing the stonework and external drainage, and beginning internal fit-out works. Preparations will also be made for the installation of roller racking to help store and organise our collections.

The good news is that the project remains on programme overall! We’re currently awaiting confirmation from South West Water regarding the final drainage connection, which will help finalise the construction schedule.

Our £1.2 million Heritage Store project will provide a climate-controlled home for our collections, helping us care for Newton Abbot’s heritage for generations to come, while creating more opportunities for the community to discover what happens behind the scenes at the museum.

It’s exciting to see the building taking shape! We’ll keep you updated as work continues. 🏛️

13/10/2026

👗 FREE Talk: A Deep Dive Beneath the Skirts of a Wealthy Tudor Lady and Her Servant by Rosemary Griggs

On Wednesday 28 October, join local author, speaker and seamstress Rosemary Griggs for a fascinating journey into the intricacies of Tudor dress and discover what Tudor fashions can tell us about how people lived 500 years ago. What a woman wore was not only a personal choice but also a public declaration of her place in the world.

This talk includes a full costume demonstration and discussion of fabrics, embroidery, who made the clothes, how they kept them clean, and how knitting became an important cottage industry.

Prepare to be surprised by the diverse pathways fashion can lead you down!

📅 Wednesday 28 October
⏰ 11am–1pm
🎟️ Free talk but booking is essential: tinyurl.com/TudorDressTalk

Join author, speaker and seamstress Rosemary Griggs to explore the intricacies of Tudor dress.

12/10/2026

You don’t need to go all the way to London to see a part of the Bayeux tapestry!

This Wednesday will mark 960 years since the Battle of Hastings.

This glass lantern slide depicts the death of Harold Godwinson from the Bayeux Tapestry, reimagined by local cartoonist Charles Vicary.

On Harold’s left side, a Wyvern standard can be seen- the wyvern is a two legged dragon that was the emblem of the kingdom of Wessex, which consisted of most of modern day southern England at its peak. When Devon became part of its territory, Britons of the Dumnonii tribe and Saxons allegedly inhabited Exeter as ‘equals’ until 927, according to William of Malmesbury.

Charles Lane Vicary, of the Vicary family, was a prolific cartoonist in Newton Abbot, often illustrating local advertisements and local figures. A recent donation of a collection of his lantern slides offer a fascinating insight into his life.

09/10/2026

📸 Our Photographic Archive is going online! 🎉

We’re excited to announce that 80 photographs from our collection are now available to browse online through South West Collections Explorer! Browse here: tinyurl.com/SWCollectionsExplorer

This is the first step in our project to make more of our photographic archive accessible to everyone and this is just the beginning. Our next batch of photographs is planned for December, when we’ll be adding even more images from the Museum’s collection.

📸 Bank Street in the 1950s from the Francis Frith Collection.

Why not have a browse and see what you can discover! tinyurl.com/SWCollectionsExplorer

Yellow Umbrella Gifts.