About Dartmouth Museum

Dartmouth Museum

Dartmouth Museum

Dartmouth Museum

A small museum housed in an old merchants house dating back to 1640, Dartmouth Museum displays and chronicles the history of the port of Dartmouth.

The Museum houses an extensive collection of artifacts, models, paintings and photographs which can help explore and develop visitors interests, whether they be in maritime history, the social and economic history of the town of Dartmouth, or the physical changes to the town over the past centuries.

The Museum occupies part of the historic Butterwalk, a terrace of rich merchants’ houses built around 1640. The collection is wide ranging, but there is special attention to the maritime history of the town and its social and physical development. The maritime connection is seen in a fine collection of ship models, some in bottles, in the King’s Room.

Elsewhere there are exhibits, as tapestry and video film, of the town’s contribution to D-Day in 1944. Three remarkable sons of Dartmouth are remembered: Thomas Newcomen, whose first practical steam engine ushered in the Industrial Revolution that changed the world; William Henley, a polymath ironmonger whose remarkable collection is displayed in a re-created Victorian study and Theodore Veale, the VC holder who showed outstanding and repeated bravery in rescuing a wounded officer at the Battle of the Somme.

The Museum welcomes all visitors, whatever their reasons for coming. The dedicated and knowledgeable volunteer stewards are there to help with suggestions and answers to queries, if necessary referring them back to our experts behind the scenes who can access our extensive archives. The Museum caters for children, whether they are in school parties or with parents. They can be placed in the stocks or search for answers to questionnaires or look through the microscopes, and even open the drawers below the displays to find other items. The Museum seeks to entertain and educate all visitors,young or old, whatever their interests.