The Original
From 1984 to 2007, Shere’s first museum opened its doors, nearly every day of the year, welcoming thousands of people.
This website celebrates the original Shere Museum.
It is a work in progress and, with over 20 years of its history to cover, more will be added from time to time.
Meanwhile, we welcome you to step inside and take a look at the original Shere Museum. As you peruse the photos, picture in your mind’s eye a friendly, relaxed and interactive space. Music and projections transporting visitors back in time, and children learning about the past by playing with the same toys that their grandparents enjoyed.
We also invite you to make local family history enquiries to the founder, Elizabeth Rich.
In the Community
Shere Museum was created almost by accident after it’s founder moved back to the village and rediscovered her love of the place. Elizabeth Rich knew how important it was to preserve Shere’s heritage and to share the local stories of the past to highlight its rich history. From a fledgling museum in the 1980s to a well-regarded and well-attended museum in the 2000s, the original Shere Museum provided local residents with a useful resource and a pleasurable place to meet. It was more than a place to look after archives and artefacts – it helped bring the community together. And if she could, Elizabeth would take it all back and do it again!
To learn more about the origins of the original Shere Museum, please take a look at the About section of this website.
Shere in the past – Do you recognise anyone?
Step into the past with the original Shere Museum and experience the Shere of the late 1940s.
Museum Curator and Archivist, Elizabeth Rich, grew up in Shere in the 1930s & 40s and has lived in the village for 60 years. Elizabeth knows a huge amount of local history and recalls village life of the past, narrating this film of ‘A Downland Village’. Look and listen closely, as you may spot someone you recognise!
APOLOGIES – THE FILM HAS BEEN REMOVED – the film is now being re-edited with new narration and captions that reflect extra information recently obtained. The new film will return as soon as it can be re-edited.
Shere’s Tudor Hat
One of the most fascinating tales of the original Shere Museum story, must be that of the felt Tudor hat. It was found, most unexpectedly, whilst repairs were being made on a cottage in the village. In 1972 a tiny, secret room was discovered next to the chimney breast, with access to it gained by climbing through the fireplace.
It’s likely that this was not owned by a common man, since it was lined with silk and the brim stiffened with slivers of wood. Perhaps this piece once belonged to a fugitive of the many religious persecutions of the period. One can even imagine the man being snatched from his hiding place, causing the hat to fly from his head and to remain, for hundreds of years, as the only evidence of him ever being there.
You can see the Tudor hat at the current museum in Gomshall Lane.
Happy Listening
A real favourite with visitors was this evocative and interactive display. It was generously loaned to the original Shere Museum by Mr Royston Heard in 1991. The exhibit followed the technological advances from telegraph messages, first used in England in 1837, through to crystal sets, do-it-yourself radios, cabinet-designed wire-lesses, and finally to television.
It was more than a comprehensive history of communications. Music filled the room, bringing with it the spirit of the 1920s and 1930s.