Trowbridge Museum

Trowbridge Museum stands in the Wiltshire town of Trowbridge, a place once at the heart of England’s cloth trade. It began in a single room in the Town Hall before moving to the Garlick Room in the Civic Hall in 1974. After years in the Civic Hall, the museum relocated in 1990 to the first floor of the Home Mills building in The Shires Shopping Centre. It closed in 2018 for major renovation and reopened three years later with a second floor added and a lift installed for better access. The work cost £1.1 million from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, £900,000 from the Town Council, and donations from the Friends of the museum and local people. The museum tells the story of West of England cloth production through rare machinery and everyday tools. Its displays include one of only five surviving Spinning Jennies, a fulling machine patented in 1833 by John Dyer, and a teazle gig used to raise the nap on cloth. A Handle House near the town bridge dried the teazle frames, and this building is almost as rare as the Spinning Jenny itself. Among the 25,000 items in the collection is Joanna Turner’s pocket watch, a silver and tortoiseshell piece engraved with her name and two prayers. She was a local evangelist in the 18th century. Visitors find two floors of exhibits and a lift for easy access between them. The museum also hosts a bi-annual Textile and Weaving Festival that celebrates the town’s cloth-related architecture and the work of local textile artists. The building itself, once part of the Home Mills, sits above the shopping centre, linking past and present in the heart of Trowbridge.