If you are still lingering under the impression that museums are dank, dark, dusty places smelling of old paper, and full of wooden cabinets jam-packed with incomprehensible objects, think again.
A visit to Maidstone Museum in St Faith’s Street will change your mind, as reporter Alan Smith found out when he was given a guided tour by Samantha Harris and Natalie Moor.
An image of Alessia Russo, the Maidstone-born goal-scorer in July’s UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 final, might not be what you’d expect to find in a museum.
But history isn’t all about what happened hundreds of years ago, and two new galleries and an enthusiastic management team have brought the collection at Maidstone Museum literally right up to date.
The Oldham Gallery, named after former town mayor Paul Oldham, opened just a few weeks ago.
It contains some of the latest items in the collection, telling the story from the Tudor times to the present day.
The town’s most recent industrial past is well represented and will bring back memories for many who used to work in Maidstone’s paper industry, the Fremlin’s brewery or at the Trebor Sharps sweet factory.
One item from Trebor Sharps must be the oldest surviving Easter Egg in the town – and it’s likely to remain so, since collections manager Samantha Harris says that the pong emanating from the 1968 decorated chocolate egg – when not enclosed in its glass case – would put anyone off eating it.
The story of Maidstone as a centre of gin production is told for the first time.
The County Town once played such a predominant role in the spirit’s production that the government recorded its tax revenues from the liquor in four regions: England, Scotland, Ireland – and Maidstone!
Also, for the first time, there is a display on sport in the area, with Teston’s famous cricket ball manufacturer Alfred Reader and Co getting a mention too.
Tardis-like, the gallery has an airy, spacious feel despite the fact that 30% more objects are on display than previously, though these remain a small proportion of the 600,000-plus objects in the town’s total collections.
The museum – which welcomed its first visitors back in 1858 – relates our history, wherever possible, to people, with large images of key individuals from each era on display.
Similarly, there is a move away from merely relating only the larger political events towards more personal histories.
The Stuart era, once almost exclusively represented by the story of the Battle of Maidstone, now includes other items such as a highly decorative jacket from that period, part of Samantha’s ambition for the museum to be Kent’s answer not only to the British Museum, but also to the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, all rolled into one.
A fuller understanding is achieved by helpful timelines, introduced for the first time, assisted by several video presentations and even an animated film commissioned from artist Giles Whitehead.
Natalie Moor, the council’s museums and heritage manager, said: “We want a visit to the museum to be fun, and something that people can relate to emotionally.”
The gallery includes a Kids Trail, with youngsters encouraged to hunt for the logo as they move around the displays.
And a new idea is the community case, where the town’s increasingly diverse communities can project their own histories on a rotating basis.
For the first six months, it is the history of the town’s Polish immigrants on display, in their own words.
The Oldham Gallery complements the Lives in Our Landscape Gallery, which itself only opened in June last year.
With objects dating back 600,000 years, it traces the story of people in Kent from their first appearance to the Tudors.
There are informative guides on how prehistoric man knapped his early flint tools, and on the different techniques that modern archeologists use to date their finds.
However, Samantha revealed that modern science sometimes generates some disappointing results.
One skull, which the museum believed to be from the Neolithic Period – and perhaps 10,000 years old – once tested, proved to be medieval from 1430 – a “mere” 600 years old.
A nearby facial reconstruction shows how the individual probably looked.
The artefacts include a child’s coffin from Roman times discovered in Holborough, and an amazing collection of sparkling Bronze Age gold jewellery found in a box in the River Medway at Aylesford.
There are also some ancient slave chains, reminding us that slavery was not invented by 18th-century plantation owners, but had in fact been present in most societies throughout time.
There is also an extensive collection of crystal spheres from the Anglo-Saxon period, which were almost always accompanied by straining spoons. Samantha confessed: “They are quite common, but no-one really knows what they are for.
“They are always labelled as for ‘ritualistic use’, but that is what archaeologists say about anything they can’t readily explain.”
As Natalie observed: “There is so much that we still don’t know.”
One interesting feature is an interactive touch-screen, enabling visitors to feed in their own address and discover what ancient artefacts have been discovered near their own home, and from what period.
Linking neatly with Oldham Gallery, the last item in the Lives in Our Landscape Gallery is a chair used by Henry VIII on his visit to Allington Castle.
It was said that he would not allow any woman to sit on it unless they gave him a kiss first.
Other areas of the museum retain more familiar and much-loved items such as the beautiful plaster sculpture of Lady Godiva by John Thomas.
Maidstone was fortunate in having, in days gone by, several gentlemen explorers and adventurers who travelled the world and brought home with them extensive collections of the items they found.
Today, such behaviour would be discouraged, but their generous donations have left Maidstone with some rich enthnographical collections from the Solomon Islands – thanks to Julius Brenchley – and with the UK’s third largest collection of Japanese art, prints and pottery, thanks to Walter Samuel – son of Lord Bearsted of Mote House – and to Henry Marsham, son of the third Earl of Romney.
There was also a noted lady explorer, Olive Macleod, who travelled to Chad in Africa in 1910 in a bid to find out what had happened to her fiancé, the explorer Boyd Alexander from Cranbrook. It transpired he had been murdered by the natives.
Her collection of tribal headresses and other items is also in the museum.
There is truly so much to be discovered at Maidstone Museum – and there will be for years to come.
Samantha and Natalie were kind enough to give us a peek inside one of the two large storerooms, where, using a space-efficient rolling shelf storage system, literally thousands of items lay waiting for their turn in the limelight.
They include one of the most numerous collections of entomology (bugs) in the country, along with thousands of stuffed birds.
Samantha handed over one particularly heavy item and invited us to guess what it was – it turned out to be a fossilised mammoth tooth.
You can see it for yourself if you join a Behind The Scenes tour, one of many extra events at the museum, which range from talks on paper-making and the history of witches in Maidstone, to the opportunity to go ghost hunting in the museum, or to enjoy an Argentinian Tango night.
Full details here.
Entry to the museum is free.
