Red House Museum and Gardens

In 1745 the churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor for Christchurch purchased a barn on the corner of Church Lane and Quay Road to provide "more comfortable support" for the town's numerous poor. In 1764 a purpose-built, red-brick poorhouse was constructed on the site, and this remained in use as the local workhouse until it was replaced in 1881 by a larger Union Workhouse that had been newly constructed in the fields to the north of the town. The last inmates to leave the increasingly decrepit Quay Road site were the "juvenile paupers", the children, who were finally relocated in 1886. The dilapidated building was bought at auction by the Rev Thomas H Bush, the vicar of the nearby Priory…

The Red House Museum is a free entry museum of local history. The ground floor features a Kitchen Gallery, Victorian Bygones Gallery, costume and fashion collections, and an exhibition of 1930s furniture by the noted Christchurch-based craftsman Arthur Romney Green. The Main Gallery in the former stables hosts regular temporary exhibitions. On the first floor there are Archaeology Galleries covering significant local Bronze Age and Saxon burials and finds associated with Hengistbury Head. There is a Local History Resource Room with public access to several thousand historical photographs, local trade directories, electoral registers, and other research material. There is also an archive of…