Wells and Mendip Museum: Wells is fortunate to have it’s very own museum, across the Cathedral Green.
The Balch Room collection includes the skull of a brown bear discovered at Wookey Hole, a large number of stone-age tools, and an impressive collection of Iron Age artefacts discovered by Balch during his many years of excavation at Wookey Hole caves.
The Geology Room houses an important collection of minerals and fossils, many of which originated in the Mendip area. Included here are ferns from the Carboniferous, fish from the Jurassic, and cave pearls from Mendip.
As well as the Archaeological and Geological Collection the Museum houses many social history artifacts. This includes a collection of samplers dating from the mid eighteenth century, displayed in the Eveleen Perkins Sampler Room. wellsmuseum.org.uk
Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury: The magnificent fourteenth-century Abbey Barn is the centrepiece of the Somerset Rural Life Museum. The barn and the farm buildings surrounding the courtyard contain displays illustrating the tools and techniques of farming in Victorian Somerset.
Unusual local activities like willow growing, mud horse fishing, peat digging and cider making are included. In the Abbey Farmhouse the social and domestic life of Victorian Somerset is described in reconstructed rooms and an exhibition which tells the life story of a farm worker, John Hodges, from the cradle to the grave.
Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday and Bank Holiday Mondays: 10.00am to 5.00pm (Closed on Good Friday).
Somerset Rural Life Museum, Abbey Farm, Chilkwell Street, Glastonbury BA6 8DB Telephone: 01458 831197
