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Amberley Museum & Heritage Centre

Amberley Museum & Heritage Centre

Amberley Museum is an open-air industrial heritage museum at Amberley, near Arundel in West Sussex, England.

The museum was founded in 1978 by the Southern Industrial History Centre Trust and has previously been known as the Amberley Working Museum, Amberley Chalk Pits Museum and Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre.

The museum is a registered charity[1] and has the support of an active Friends organisation.

Amberley Museum
Motor Engineers, Amberley working museum - geograph.org.uk - 476830.jpg
Motor Engineers, Amberley working museum.
Amberley Museum & Heritage Centre is located in West Sussex
Amberley Museum & Heritage Centre
Location within West Sussex
LocationAmberley, West Sussex, England
Coordinates50°53′53″N 0°32′22″W [25]
TypeIndustrial heritage
Websitewww.amberleymuseum.co.uk [26]

Location

The open-air museum is 36-acre (146,000 m2),[2] located next to Amberley railway station and dedicated to the industrial heritage of South East England and with a special interest in aspects of the history of communications and transport.[3]

The museum is sited in a former chalk quarry [4] where the chalk was converted into lime for use in mortar and cement,[5] and remaining on site are several kilns, including a De Witt set, and associated buildings including offices, bagging shed and locomotive shed.

Also to be seen is the quarry tunnel (which appeared as Mainstrike Mine in the James Bond film A View to a Kill). Additional buildings have been relocated or replicated on the site and exhibition halls added. The natural history and geology of the site can be seen from a nature trail.

Exhibits and collections

Wheelwright's Shop

Wheelwright's Shop

Electricity Pavilion

Electricity Pavilion

Sawing Logs at the timber yard

Sawing Logs at the timber yard

The site hosts a range and exhibitions and collections not all of which are opened every day.

  • Connected Earth telecommunications exhibition[6]

  • Electricity Hall[7]

  • Machine Shop[8]

  • Wheelwright's Shop, from Horsham

  • Vintage Wireless and Communications exhibition and Amateur radio station

  • Ironmonger's shop

  • Timber yard and Steam crane

  • Village Garage, a reconstructed 1930s automobile repair shop

  • Paviors Hall of Road Making, located in a 19th-century iron-framed industrial building relocated from Horsham

  • Cycle Exhibition

  • Rural telephone exchange, incorporating 1940s equipment from Coolham

  • Arundel Gin Building, housing a plumbing display

  • Brickyard drying shed, late 19th century, from Petersfield, Hampshire

  • Fairmile Café, a 1930s roadside.

  • Dover Cottage Pump House, from Arundel, and water pumping display

  • Stationary engine shed, and Municipal engine house from Littlehampton

  • Fire Station, reproduction of a typical 1950s building completed in 2008 and now housing several roadworthy historic fire engines and an impressive collection of displays and exhibits primarily relating to the history of fire-fighting in Sussex.

  • Toll bridge hut, from Littlehampton swing bridge

  • Working Printing Shop

  • Cobbler's shop, with equipment from Bognor Regis

  • Hall of Tools, with associated demonstrations by the Tools and Trades History Society

Crafts

Crafts demonstrated on site include woodturning, broom-making, walking stick-making and the work of the blacksmith and potters. Special events are held regularly.

Rail and bus collections

Amberley Narrow Gauge & Industrial Railway Collection

Narrow gauge railway

Narrow gauge railway

The Amberley Museum Railway is a 2 ft (610 mm) narrow gauge railway and railway exhibition hall devoted to British industrial narrow gauge railways.[9][10] There are 45 locomotives, with 8 being steam powered, 29 internal combustion and 4 battery electric, and around 80 items of rolling stock, chiefly goods wagons,[11][12][13] based largely on the collection of the former Brockham Museum (relocated here in 1982).[14] There is special interest in railway material from the Dorking Greystone Lime Company[15] and also from the Groudle Glen Railway in the Isle of Man.[16] Of the 8 steam locos, two are currently operational.

Southdown Bus collection

Southdown Leyland Cub No. 524 passes the Tool and Trades History Society Building

Southdown Leyland Cub No. 524 passes the Tool and Trades History Society Building

The collection completed by a reconstructed 1920s Southdown Bus garage. The depot houses working buses chiefly from the local operator Southdown Motor Services[17][18][19] based on the collection of the Southdown Omnibus Trust[20]

On open days the Southdown Bus collection operates bus rides throughout the day. The collection of vehicles is listed below.

Operational buses

  • 1914 Worthing Motor Services/Southdown Tilling Stevens open-top 41-seater IB 552. (Restricted use because the bus is fragile)

  • 1922 Southdown Leyland N Type open-top 51-seater CD 5125.

  • 1927 Southdown Dennis 30 cwt single-deck UF 1517.

  • 1928 Sunderland Corporation Leyland Lion LT1 single-deck BR 7132 (Privately Owned).

  • 1930 Southdown Tilling Stevens B10 A2 single-deck 31-seater UF 6805.

  • 1931 Southdown Leyland Titan TD1 double-deck 50-seater UF 6473.

  • 1931 Southdown Leyland Titan TD1 double-deck 50-seater UF 7428.

  • 1937 Southdown Leyland Cub single-deck 24-seater ECD 524.

  • Replica 1938 Shelvoke and Drewry Worthing Tramocar BP9822 single-deck. (Small bus generally used at quiet times)

Buses undergoing repair or restoration

  • 1923 Southdown Tilling Stevens single-deck CD 4867. (Chassis only, planned to be fitted with a raked charabanc-type body)

See also

  • Arundel Museum and Heritage Centre

  • List of British railway museums

  • British narrow gauge railways

References

[1]
Citation Linkapps.charitycommission.gov.ukCharity Commission. Amberley Chalk Pits Museum, registered charity no. 278722.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[2]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgAmberley Working Museum (2005). Amberley Working Museum.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[3]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgDean, Ian (Summer 1981). "Chalk Pits Museum". Yesteryear Transport (9): 12–15.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[4]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgOwned by the Pepper Family for 30 years Times 24/2/04 Obituary of Ginny Fiennes (née Pepper)
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[5]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgAldsworth, Fred (1979). Limeburning and the Amberley Chalkpits. Chichester: West Sussex County Council. ISBN 0-900800-33-X.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[6]
Citation Linkwww.connected-earth.com"Connected Earth". Archived from the original on 10 May 2007. Retrieved 13 May 2007.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[7]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgGordon, Bob (1981). One Hundred Years of Electricity Supply 1881-1981. Hove: Seeboard.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[8]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgFermer, Hugh (1995). Machine Tools: a history 1540-1986. Amberley Museum. ISBN 0-9519329-1-8.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[9]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgAmberley Chalk Pits Museum (1984). Industrial Railways of the South-East. Midhurst: Middleton Press. ISBN 0-906520-09-6.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[10]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgDean, Ian (1984). Industrial Narrow Gauge Railways. Princes Risborough: Shire Publications. ISBN 0-85263-752-7.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[11]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgCork, Gerry (2001). The Amberley Museum Narrow Gauge and Industrial Railway Collection. Amberley Museum.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[12]
Citation Linkhome.fastnet.co.uk"Narrow Gauge and Industrial Railway Collection". Archived from the original on 3 July 2007. Retrieved 13 May 2007.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[13]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgSmithers, Mark (September 1995). "The Railway Treasures of Amberley". Railway World. 57 (664): 33–5.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[14]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgSmith, D.H. (April 1983). "Brockham Metamorphosis — at the Chalk Pits Museum". Narrow Gauge (101): 1–6.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[15]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgTownsend, J.L. (1980). Townsend Hook and the Railways of the Dorking Greystone Lime Co. Ltd. Betchworth: Brockham Museum. ISBN 0-9504720-4-2.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[16]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgSmith, David H. (1989). The Groudle Glen Railway. Brighton: Plateway Press. ISBN 1-871980-00-X.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[17]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgSouthdown Omnibus Trust (c. 2004). The Amberley Collection.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[18]
Citation Linkhome.fastnet.co.uk"Southdown Bus Garage Project". Archived from the original on 28 May 2007. Retrieved 13 May 2007.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[19]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgLamb, Philip (July 2003). "Before Mary Was Queen". Bus & Coach Preservation. 5 (8): 6–11.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM
[20]
Citation Linkweb.archive.org"Crash Gearbox: the website of the Southdown Omnibus Trust". Archived from the original on 16 April 2007. Retrieved 13 May 2007.
Oct 1, 2019, 5:10 AM