Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery

Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery stands in the old market town of Petersfield, Hampshire. The main building is the former police station on St Peter’s Road, built in 1858 by Hampshire Constabulary’s architect Thomas Stopher and his son. Next to it is the magistrate’s courthouse of 1893, which once housed the town’s Petty Sessional Court. Both buildings now form one site that also includes a shop and the Edward Thomas Centre. The museum opened in 1999 in the courthouse and later expanded into the police station after a £4 million redevelopment finished in 2021. The museum holds collections that tell the story of Petersfield and its surroundings. The archaeology section comes from the ‘People of the Heath’ project, which excavated fourteen Bronze Age barrows on Petersfield Heath. The fashion collection features over a thousand garments from the 18th century to today, donated by Bedales School’s drama department. Flora Twort’s watercolours and pastels capture Hampshire scenes from the 1920s and 1930s, including Petersfield Market and the Taro Fair. Don Eades’s photographic archive shows daily life from the 1960s to the 1980s, with images of the first supermarket and village sports. Visitors find rooms that once held cells and stables now filled with local history. The social history gallery displays objects such as a penny-farthing, pub signs and tools from the Isle of Wight. The Edward Thomas Centre holds books and papers linked to the poet who wrote most of his poems while living nearby. Paintings by Flora Twort line the walls of her dedicated gallery, while photographs and maps fill display cases across the building. The site’s two-storey layout lets visitors move from the courthouse to the police station without leaving the museum.