Collections

Collected locally from Jurassic Oxford Clay beds, these marine reptile fossils are of international importance and include unique specimens of Ichthyosaurs, Pliosaurs and Plesiosaurs. We also have a specimen of the largest fish that ever lived – Leedsichthys – and many other fossils that lived in the Jurassic seas, including long-extinct ammonites and belemnites.

As well as the Jurassic collection, the museum has a large and diverse geology collection containing fossils, rocks and minerals both from the local area and nationwide. Our Ice Age collection features the remains of creatures that lived during the last ice age, including woolly mammoths, giant reindeer, and even a hippopotamus.

Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery has a large collection of local archaeological finds which reflect human occupation of the area since the earliest times. The period spans the Old Stone Age (Palaeolithic), over 200,000 years ago and includes the Bronze & Iron Ages as well as Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Medieval. The archaeological collection and archive is still growing as new building development uncovers further remains around the Peterborough area.

Notable amongst the collections are finds from the prehistoric settlements at Fengate, Nene Valley Ware from the local Roman pottery industries, finds from a local Roman Villa at Durobrivae and fine grave goods from Anglo-Saxon burials, including a hanging bowl.

The collection consists of largely entomology, and mounted birds and mammals, along with small collections of herbarium (including fungi), molluscs and birds eggs. There are approximately 300 birds in the collection which are mainly British with a few foreign birds. The entomology collections represent the most significant holdings of natural history in terms of numbers and scientific importance. The majority being Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), with a coleopteran (beetles) collection. The museum also have a small osteology collections mostly of mammal bones which is primarily used for education.

The Prison Camp at Norman Cross, near Peterborough, was constructed during the Napoleonic Wars between 1797 and 1815 to hold French and Dutch prisoners of war.

The Norman Cross collection at Peterborough Museum is considered both the largest and finest collection of such items in the world, the museum displays objects of carved bone, wood and ivory, including model ships, guillotines, needlework boxes, playing cards and articles of straw marquetry.

The collection contains an interesting variety of art dating from the 1600s to the present day. Among the highlights of the collection are landscape paintings by Van Huysum, the well known Dutch flower painter, ‘View of Port St Denis’ by Sickert, the leading British Impressionist painter., and the Ealand Warwick Bequest, a collection of works by top British artists from the 1960’s. There are many paintings, prints and drawings with a Peterborough connection including watercolours of Peterborough Cathedral by J M W Turner and David Cox.

Portraits and landscapes selected from the permanent art collection are usually on display around the museum.

Our wide and varied social history collection offers a glimpse, and a better understanding, of everyday life for people at different times in history.

Collections cover everything from costumes from 1600 onwards, coins and medals, military equipment, Victorian household items, folk life, ceramics and glass, and photographs of the area as well as children’s toys, tobacco pipes, farming tools, Staffordshire pottery and English drinking vessels