Eden Valley Museum

The Eden Valley Museum sits in Edenbridge, a market town in Kent. It occupies a medieval farmhouse built between 1380 and 1410 and later altered in the 16th century. The building was clad in brick in the late 18th and early 19th century, hiding its timber frame. Originally called Doggetts Farm, it became Church House in 1913 after Miss Geraldine Rickards converted it. In 1921 she donated the house to the Parish Church for community use. The museum holds notable collections on cricket ball making, tanning, archaeology and local archives. A needlework box made by a German prisoner of war during the Second World War is among its treasures. The displays cover the area’s topography, people, communities and trades across several rooms. Temporary exhibitions run for up to eighteen months, updated regularly by local volunteers. Visitors find permanent displays on Whitmore’s Tannery, once the town’s biggest employer until it closed in 1974. Other exhibits show cricket ball manufacturing, farming, iron smelting, brick making and hop growing. A large photographic archive and local family records support historical research. The museum’s collecting area includes Edenbridge and surrounding parishes such as Chiddingstone, Hever and Penshurst.