Ilchester Museum

Ilchester Museum is a small local museum in Ilchester, Somerset. It sits behind the town hall in a Grade II listed former private house called Town Hall House. The building itself dates from the 18th century and has an asymmetrical front of two bays on the High Street. Its ground floor once had a central doorway between two bay windows under a slate roof. The upper floors are lit by sash windows and topped with a plain parapet. The museum opened in 1989 in memory of the local writer James Stevens-Cox, who published A History of Ilchester in 1947. It is run by the Ilchester Town Trust and traces the town’s past from Iron Age Lindinis through Roman times to the present. Among its Roman exhibits is a complete female skeleton from the late Roman period. Another highlight is the town’s 13th-century mace, the oldest staff of office in England, which bears the insignia of Richard I and three kings plus an angel. The collection also holds a full set of Maundy Money presented by Queen Elizabeth II in Wells Cathedral in 1993. Visitors find displays covering every period of Ilchester’s history. A BBC Radio Somerset programme about Ilchester’s old gaols was made with the museum’s help and broadcast in 2017. The exhibits sit inside the modest rooms of the former private house, giving a quiet, focused view of local life across the centuries.