Museum and Art Gallery Permanent Collections

Art Gallery

The Alfred East Art Gallery holds important collections donated by Sir Alfred East and Thomas Cooper Gotch, both born in Kettering.

The Art Gallery collections are not all on display at the same time. There are far too many items to fit in the building!

The gallery collections can be accessed for research purposes on request. Please contact the Museum and Gallery for further details.

Museum

The museum collects only those items, which were made or used within the geographical area of Kettering Borough for its permanent collections. The current size of the collections is thought to total circa 20,000 artefacts.

The collections are divided into the following categories:

• Social and Industrial History - Domestic life material, Boot and Shoe industry items, agricultural tools and equipment, costume, ephemera etc.
• Geology - A good selection of geological material with a major strength in local rocks and fossils, particularly from the Jurassic strata and Quaternary deposits.
• Natural history - a small collection of stuffed animals and other specimens.
• Numismatics (coins) - a mixed collection of material as diverse as Roman coins through to pre-decimalisation coinage and tokens.
• Handling collection - A variety of material from the above disciplines used in education and outreach sessions, and through a schools & reminiscence loans scheme.
• Archaeology - Particular areas of strength lie in the Roman and Saxon collections, though some prehistoric, medieval and post-medieval material is also present.

Archaeological Collections

Roots is an image database of the museum's archaeological collections. You can search our collections in a number of ways dependent on whether you are a non specialist or an archaeological researcher.

If you're new to Roots you could take one of the Tour options, which will introduce you to some of the main types of artefacts we hold in our collections.

Access to the Collections

The Museum collections are not all on display at the same time. There are far too many items to fit in the building!

The Museum collections can be accessed for research purposes on request.  Please contact the Museum and Gallery for further details. At least one month's notice is required for this request.

Last updated: 25/05/2012