Willis Museum

The Willis Museum stands in Basingstoke’s Market Place, a Grade II listed building that once served as the town hall. Designed in the neoclassical style by Lewis Wyatt, it was completed in 1835 and originally featured an open arcade used as a corn exchange. A large Jubilee Memorial clock tower replaced an earlier structure in 1887, though the tower was demolished in 1961. The clock movement from 1760, made by John Atkins of Lichfield, still survives and is displayed inside. The building later housed magistrates’ courts and council meetings before becoming a museum in 1984. The museum was founded in 1931 by local clockmaker George W. Willis and renamed in his honour in 1956. It covers Basingstoke’s history from the Upper Cretaceous Age to the 1960s and 1970s, including displays like the remains of ‘Basingstoke Man’ and what may be the world’s oldest wedding cake. The Sainsbury Gallery, added in 2008 with funding from the Linbury Trust, hosts temporary exhibitions such as ‘May The Toys Be With You’ and ‘Turner and the Sun’. A bronze statue of Jane Austen by sculptor Adam Roud was unveiled outside in 2017 to mark the 200th anniversary of her death. Inside, visitors find rooms filled with local artefacts, from ancient fossils to modern memorabilia. The museum’s exhibits trace the town’s development, including the controversial removal of medieval coins in 2014. Upstairs, traces of the old assembly rooms remain, where dances were once held. The Jane Austen statue stands in the square where she may have shopped or danced, linking the past to the present. The building itself, with its neoclassical lines and surviving clock, offers a glimpse of Basingstoke’s layered history.