Woolpit Village Museum

Woolpit Museum is located on the upper floor of this early 16th century cottage. The entrance is via the white, bricked building to the left in this picture

In the mid 1980s Woolpit History Group started field-walking throughout the parish. After several years three Roman sites and eight Medieval sites had been found and confirmed.
In 1983 the Parish Council asked if it would be feasible to display what had been found and so the Woolpit and District Museum was begun. The History Group took over a store-room on the upper floor of the Woolpit Village Memorial Institute and began to set up the smallest Museum in the county.
Because the room is so small some displays are changed each year, and over the last thirty or so years there have been nearly seventy different exhibitions explaining the history of Woolpit from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.
There are two permanent displays. The first shows the famous Woolpit Brickmaking Works presented as a 3D model of the site as it was in its later days, with a collection of bricks, tiles, photos and various tools used in the trade. A booklet The History of Woolpit Brickworks is available in the small shop. The second display is a reconstruction of a Victorian Kitchen with artefacts, which might have been used in everyday life up to the 1920s.

New for 2020

New for this year is a display about the artist Sybil Andrews who lived in Woolpit in the 1920s. Some of her work was inspired by the countryside of mid Suffolk, and themes incorporated in the banner she made depicting the martyrdom of St Edmund (now hanging in St Edmundsbury Cathedral), were sketched out on the walls of her little cottage. We are keeping the model of St Mary’s Church as our centrepiece for another year but have extended the display to include information and pictures about the Woolpit Room Christian Fellowship in White Elm Road and the former Primitive Methodist Chapel in Heath Road. We have also extended our display of photographs of Woolpit as it looked circa 1900 to about 1930. It is interesting to make comparisons with the village today and see what has and what has not changed.

Our two popular permanent displays, the Brickworks and the Victorian kitchen, have been cleaned and refreshed, and we have created a new display about the Green Children as so many visitors are interested in this legend. The original war memorial board is also now on permanent display and we have added some information about the ‘extension’ made to it in 1948 to include the names of the six local men who lost their lives in WW2.

Model of brickworks site	The museum roof

The Museum is open every Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday from 2:00pm – 4:30pm from the beginning of April until the last week-end of September. We also open on Wednesday afternoons in August 1pm to 3.30pm.

There is a car park opposite the Church and on street parking.
Refreshments can be bought in the village. There is also a picnic site.

By prior arrangement the museum can be opened at other times, and coach parties are welcome. Talks and tours can be arranged by appointment.
The museum has some information relating to the village and families, which can be made available for visitors to consult.

Contact museum@woolpit.org We look forward to seeing you sometime.