Monmouth Museum

For the Nelson Museum in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, United Kingdom, see Norfolk Nelson Museum.
Monmouth Museum
Location Market Hall, Monmouth, Wales
Coordinates 51°48′47″N 2°42′56″W / 51.8131°N 2.7156°W / 51.8131; -2.7156
Curator Andrew Helme
Website Official website
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The only known example of an original Monmouth cap, dating from the 16th century on display at the museum.
Market Hall on fire in 1963
Keith Kissack with Prince Charles in the Museum, 1975.
View of Monmouth Museum from Vauxhall Fields, including the River Monnow

The Monmouth Museum, alternatively known as The Nelson Museum and Local History Centre,[1] is a museum in Monmouth, Monmouthshire, south east Wales. It features a collection of artifacts associated with Admiral Horatio Nelson. The Museum is located in the old Market Hall in the town centre in Monmouth, a short distance from the River Monnow, Monmouth Castle and Agincourt Square.

History

The Nelson collection was a bequest to the town of Monmouth upon the 1923 death of Lady Georgiana Llangattock,[2] wife of local landowner and town benefactor, John Rolls, 1st Baron Llangattock and mother of Charles Rolls, who had amassed the collection of Nelson memorabilia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the late nineteenth century, Lady Llangattock donated a gymnasium in Glendower Street to the town of Monmouth.[2][3] After her death, the gymnasium reopened as the Nelson Museum in 1924.[4] The museum moved to new quarters in 1969; the building which initially housed it is known as the Nelson Rooms.[3][5] The collection includes Nelson's naval officers fighting sword (and those of the surrendered French and Spanish naval commanders at Trafalgar), letters from Nelson both to his wife[6] and to Lady Hamilton and various items commemorating Nelson's victories, his Royal Navy career and his visit, with the Hamiltons, to Monmouth town, The Kymin and South Wales. Also on display are commemorative silverware, prints, paintings, glassware, pottery and models of the Battle of Trafalgar. Among the items from Nelson's visit is the table used when he dined at the Kymin Round House.[7]

The collection also comprises some Nelson fakes, including a glass eye purported to be his, even though he had lost his sight, not the eyeball itself; it is a surgeon's teaching model. The museum also holds items relating to Monmouth town's history and archaeology, and an archive relating to Charles Rolls and his family. One notable example of this is the only known example of an original Monmouth Cap, dating from the 16th century.

The museum opened in 1924, in the gymnasium in Glendower Street which the Llangattock family donated to mark the coming of age of John Maclean Rolls in 1891, now the Nelson Rooms.[3][8] It moved to its current location in 1969 after the Market Hall had been completely refurbished and redesigned. The entire central part of the Market Hall building had been destroyed by a fire in 1963.[9]

Museum Collection

References

  1. ↑ "Monmouth Town Guide". Monmouth Town Council. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  2. 1 2 "Monmouth and Its Rich Past". Herefordshire Life. 19 February 2010. Retrieved 31 May 2012.
  3. 1 2 3 "The Nelson Rooms, Glendower Street, No. 2, Monmouth". coflein.gov.uk. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Retrieved 31 May 2012.
  4. ↑ "Nelson Manuscripts at Monmouth Museum" (PDF). nationalarchives.gov.uk. The National Archives - Nelson Museum and Local History Centre. Retrieved 31 May 2012.
  5. ↑ "Attractions - Monmouth Museum". monmouthshire.gov.uk. Monmouthshire County Council. Retrieved 31 May 2012.
  6. ↑ Nelson, Horatio; et al. (1958). Nelson's letters to his wife: and other documents, 1785-1831. Taylor & Francis. p. 630.
  7. ↑ Jones, Barbara (1974). Follies & Grottoes. Constable & Co. p. 414. ISBN 0-09-459350-7.
  8. ↑ Helme, Andrew (July 2009). "Nelson Museum". Monnow Voice (3). p. 6.
  9. ↑ "The New Market Hall fire, Monmouth, 1963". Gathering the Jewels. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
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