Southend Central Museum
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Southend Central Museum is a museum in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England. The museum houses collections of local and natural history and contains a planetarium constructed by astronomer Harry Ford in 1984.[1]
The museum was opened in April 1981 in a Grade II listed building that was previously Southend's first free public library. The library service had moved to a new purpose built site on Victoria Avenue, which opened on 20 March 1974.[2]
The building
The Museum was originally built in 1905 as a free library, with £8,000 of funding from Andrew Carnegie. The architect was Henry Thomas Hare. The building was listed in 1974.[3]
The collections
The Museum features a collection of original Ekco radios, manufactured by E.K. Cole & Co. Ltd. (or 'Ekco') formerly based in Southend. In the 1930s, this company was one of Britain's largest radio manufacturers.[4]
The displays also include local and natural history and archaeology.[5]
In September 2018 the museum opened a major exhibition of finds recovered from the wreck of the HMS London, a 17th Century Cromwellian era warship that exploded and sank in the Thames Estuary in 1665. The exhibition ran till July 2019.[6]
In May 2019 a new gallery opened to display the archaeological finds from the Royal Saxon tomb in Prittlewell, an Anglo-Saxon burial mound in the suburb of Prittlewell that was discovered in 2003 as a result of a road-widening scheme. The excavations unearthed a number of Anglo-Saxon artefacts that suggested a high-status burial; carbon dating has revealed that the burial probably dates from about 580 AD, and may have been the tomb of Sæxa, brother of Sæberht, King of Essex.[7][8]
Additional photographs
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Collection of Ekco radios on show at the Central Museum
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Butterflies from the reserve natural history collections of Southend Museums Service
References
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External links
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- Pages with script errors
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- Buildings and structures in Southend-on-Sea
- Former library buildings in England
- Museums established in 1981
- Planetaria in the United Kingdom
- Natural history museums in England
- Local museums in Essex
- 1981 establishments in England
- Buildings by Henry Hare
- Grade II listed buildings in Essex