Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon

The museum was founded as the North Devon Athenæum in 1888 by William Frederick Rock, who intended it to serve as a replacement for the Barnstaple Literary and Scientific Institute he had created in 1845. In addition to functioning as a library and museum, the building served as an informal records office for Barnstaple. An innovation unusual at that time was that men and women shared the reading rooms as Rock believed that separate facilities would encourage women to gossip rather than read. The Librarian lived in the building, a requirement that lasted until the 1930s. The Devon County Library Service occupied the main floor from 1956, relocating from much smaller premises in the Bridge…

listed]] The structure was built in 1872 for William Thorne, but sold to the Barnstaple Bridge Trust in 1876 who then sold it to William Frederick Rock. Constructed in red brick with dressings of stone and terracotta, the hipped and slated roof has a flat central section which is set with ornamental iron railings together with 5 red brick chimneys with stone caps. The building is square and is built round an internal courtyard with on the right on the building's North side a small service wing which may actually be a former coach-house with a walled courtyard behind. Inside is a fine wooden staircase in the Jacobean style with twisted balusters and large carved newels with a Gothic stone…

The museum's collections and displays cover the natural and human history of North Devon. Galleries include the Tarka Gallery, the Story of North Devon, the Regimental Collections of the Royal Devon Yeomanry and the Royal 1st Devon Yeomanry, furniture by Shapland & Petter and a collection of 17th century pewter and ceramics from the area including Art Pottery by Brannam Pottery, William Leonard Baron and Alexander Lauder. Also on display is a full-size recreation of the front half of the Barnstaple Elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), a rare straight-tusked elephant which became extinct in the UK around 115,000 years ago and the fossil of which was excavated in Barnstaple in February 1844. On…