Walsall Museum

Walsall Museum was a small, local history museum located in the centre of Walsall in the West Midlands. The holdings of Walsall Museum range from seventeenth-century firemarks to twenty-first century posters. There is also a large collection of costume and textiles; notably The Hodson Shop Collection, a unique collection of unsold shop stock of working-class clothing dating from the 1920s to the 1960s. The museum closed permanently in March 2015.^[1] The collections were placed in secure storage and remain under the care of Walsall Council's Museum Service.^[2]

Collections[]

Walsall Museum’s collection includes products of local industries, particularly those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as curios and costume.

Metalworking[]

A very large collection of lorinery, locally-made locks, brass wares and chains.

Twentieth-century industry[]

Innovative stainless steel homewares made by of Bloxwich, and Gaydon and items made by BIP's Streetly Plastics, are represented in the collection.

Walsall at War[]

Objects from the First World War and Second World War, including gas masks and soldiers' equipment.

The Hodson Shop[]

The nationally significant Hodson Shop collection comprises the unsold stock of a small drapers' shop in Willenhall, and includes everyday clothing from the 1920s to the 1970s - the sort of garments that rarely find their way into museum collections.

Curios[]

The collection also includes a scold's bridle; a preserved crocodile; and a preserved child's arm, found in a chimney at the White Hart Inn on Caldmore Green. The arm was discovered in 1870 and thought to be a 'hand of glory', but tests showed it to be a medical specimen that has been injected with the preservative formalin. It is known that a doctor was residing at the White Hart, but not how he came by the arm.^[3]

Local notables[]

There are also a few items relating to famous Walsall figures including the local author Jerome K. Jerome, the nursing pioneer Sister Dora and John Henry Carless, a recipient of the Victoria Cross in the First World War.

References[]

External links[]

• Walsall Museum website