Castle Cary and District Museum

The Castle Cary and District Museum sits in the Market House, a grade II* listed building raised in 1855 by F. C. Penrose to meet expected trade after the railway’s arrival the following year. The stone structure replaced a 17th-century predecessor on the same spot and still shows traces of the earlier building. Inside are two original prison cells and the village Information Centre. The ground floor holds local fossils, including ammonites, and a display about the Ichthyosaurus skeleton found at Alford. Tools and implements from farms and workshops line the walls, alongside information on Cary Castle. The museum’s upper floor traces the town’s rope and hemp trade, with exhibits on John Boyd Textiles and Donne & Sons, who made rope here from 1797 until the 1960s. A section covers the geology of the area and the history of Cary Castle, a motte-and-bailey fortress built after the Norman conquest. The castle was besieged twice in the 12th century before being abandoned in the 15th for a manor house nearby. Excavations in 1890 uncovered the remains of a 24-metre square tower. A room is devoted to Parson James Woodforde, born in Ansford in 1740. After curacies in Thurloxton and Norfolk he spent nearly forty-five years writing a diary that records the everyday life of 18th-century rural England. The museum also offers a glimpse of the town’s agricultural past through relics and tools. Visitors leave with a sense of Castle Cary’s layered history, from medieval castle to Victorian market house.