Museum of Cambridge

The Museum of Cambridge sits in a 16th-century inn on Castle Street, its timber beams and low ceilings still showing the old White Horse Inn. The building became a museum in 1936, after a Women’s Institute exhibition filled the Guildhall with local history. Queen Mary visited two years later and gave two small objects that remain on display. Enid Porter ran the museum from 1947 to 1976, turning it into a centre for Cambridgeshire stories and memories. Today it holds more than twenty thousand everyday things from the county and the Fens. The collection ranges from toys and textiles to coins and costumes, with paintings by Mary Charlotte Greene and painted inn signs by Richard Hopkins Leach. A project called Capturing Cambridge gathers local recollections street by street, adding fresh layers to the displays. The museum once faced closure in 1988 and again in 2017, but a 2020 appeal led by Daniel Zeichner helped it reopen in 2021. Its independence means every object tells a story chosen by the people of Cambridge. Inside, rooms spill across creaking floors past cases of medicine bottles, medals and tools. A miniature table and a tea caddy given by Queen Mary sit beside changing exhibits drawn from the crowdsourced archive. The low rooms and sloping passages keep the feel of the old inn, while outside Castle Street hums with the city’s daily life.