Southend Central Museum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Central Museum, Southend | |
  Museum location in Essex | |
| Established | 1981 |
|---|---|
| Location | Southend-on-Sea, Essex |
| Coordinates | 51°32′32″N 0°42′38″E / 51.5422°N 0.7106°E |
| Type | Local history |
| Key holdings | Prittlewell Anglo-Saxon burial; The London shipwreck |
| Collections | Costume, fine art, local history, natural history, archaeology |
| Architect | Henry Thomas Hare |
| Owner | Southend-on-Sea City Council - Southend Museums |
| Public transit access |  Southend Victoria |
| Website | www |
Southend Central Museum is a museum in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England. The museum houses collections of local and natural history and contains a planetarium constructed by astronomer Harry Ford in 1984.[1]
The museum was opened in April 1981 in a Grade II listed building that was previously Southend's first free public library. The library service had moved to a new purpose built site on Victoria Avenue, which opened on 20 March 1974.[2]
The Museum was originally built in 1905 as a free library, with £8,000 of funding from Andrew Carnegie. The architect was Henry Thomas Hare. The building was listed in 1974.[3]
The collections
The museum features a collection of original Ekco radios, manufactured by E.K. Cole & Co. Ltd. (or 'Ekco') formerly based in Southend. In the 1930s, this company was one of Britain's largest radio manufacturers.[4]
The displays also include local and natural history and archaeology.[5]
In September 2018 the museum opened a major exhibition of finds recovered from the wreck of HMS London, a 17th century Cromwellian era warship that exploded and sank in the Thames Estuary in 1665. The exhibition ran till July 2019.[6]
In May 2019 a new gallery opened to display the archaeological finds from the Royal Saxon tomb in Prittlewell, an Anglo-Saxon burial mound in the suburb of Prittlewell that was discovered in 2003 as a result of a road-widening scheme. The excavations unearthed a number of Anglo-Saxon artefacts that suggested a high-status burial; carbon dating has revealed that the burial probably dates from about 580 AD, and may have been the tomb of Sæxa, brother of Sæberht, King of Essex.[7][8]
