Tewkesbury Museum

Staffed entirely by volunteers the museum is a Registered Charity (No: 1185929). Situated in a beautiful 17th Century house, this wonderfully low tech and eclectic museum houses a plethora of collections which reflects human activity in the region over the last 5000 years. Tewkesbury Museum displays examples of stone, metalwork, pottery and coins from the Neolithic, Medieval and Roman Periods ri

ght up to the present day. The collections cover every aspect of civic, social; and industrial life in the area. Amongst our most popular exhibits are:

The Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, 550 years ago this year. Our newly refurbished battle gallery will follow the armies of Lancaster and York to their fateful meeting on the Bloody Meadow. Our wonderfully unique model fairground with over 400 figures. Once a tourist attraction in the town, it was given to the museum in a sorry state in the 1980s. a series of renovations, the latest in 2018-2020 has resulted in a working model with light, sound and motion. Press a button to start a ride. Learn also about Walkers, who manufactured fairground rides in central Tewkesbury and the Mop Fair, originally a hiring and trading fair, now a funfair that takes over the town streets for 2 days every October. The Life of Raymond Priestley, Tewkesbury's own Polar Explorer. Priestly, a geologist, travelled to the Antarctic with Shackleton and then on Scott's ill-fated 1912 expedition. Priestley and his group spent six months of Antarctic winter in an ice cave, living on a diet of penguin and seal. In the spring they returned to base camp to learn the Robert Falcon Scott and his team had died whilst returning from the South Pole. We hope to build a completely new gallery to do justice to this epic tale of survival, to illustrate the importance of Priestley's work in Antarctica and to follow the course of his life.