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Portland Museum,

Portland, Dorset

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Portland Museum has been given its own page because there is so much to see in this wonderfully old-fashioned attraction.

Opening hours and admission charges:-

Easter - October: 10.30 - 13.00, 13.30 - 17.00 but closed all day Wednesdays and Sundays

November - Easter: Museum closed except for pre-arranged group visits.

Open every day during school holidays.

Free to Seniors, Children and Students - otherwise £2.00
Near the point where the road through Wakeham bends to avoid Pennsylvania Castle lies a row of very old cottages.

In the early 1960s these could be bought for under £1,000. The right-hand pair of cottages form Portland Museum.

These were bought and presented to the people of Portland for use as a museum in 1930 by Dr Marie Stopes, a pioneer of birth control in Britain.

The end cottage was called Avice's Cottage and is mentioned in Thomas Hardy's novel "The Well-Beloved".

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69571028 Another view of Portland Museum recorded in 1989.

One of the two cottages dates from 1640.

Behind the counter on the ground floor are examples of Reeve Staffs upon which notches were carved to record the rents paid to the Court Leet every year.

Each village had its own symbol and the number and size of the notches recorded the payments.

In the garden is a main shaft from one of the medieval windmills, please click here to go to the windmill page.

This ammonite is a large example of the many thousands of similar fossils discovered all over Portland.

A Roman coffin - one of the few to survive the rapacious destruction of the historical features of Portland by the quarry industry.

It is said that hundreds of similar coffins and other ancient artifacts were dug out at Kingsbarrow in Victorian times and deliberately destroyed so that the extraction of stone would not be delayed.

The case of the 1,000 ton German bomb discovered under Portland United Football Club pitch when it was dug up for stone extraction in 

Read the full story of Portland's Bomb by clicking here.

Examples of the famous Portland Screw Jack used until the 20th century for lifting several tons of stone blocks in the quarries.