Portland Museum, Dorset facts for kids

Portland Museum.

Portland Museum is a cool place to visit on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England. It's in a small village called Wakeham, right at the southern end. What's really special is that the museum is inside two old cottages from the 1600s! They have cool thatched roofs and are protected historical buildings.

Avice's Cottage.

One of these cottages, called Avice's Cottage, was even in a famous book! The writer Thomas Hardy wrote about it in his 1897 novel The Well-Beloved. In the story, it was home to three generations of characters named Avice.

The museum was started by a woman named Marie Stopes. She bought the two cottages in 1929 when they were old and falling apart. She then gave them to Portland so they could be a museum. The museum first opened its doors in 1930. Marie Stopes was the first person to look after the museum, and she stayed involved until she passed away in 1958.

What You Can See at Portland Museum

The garden area of Portland Museum.

A large ammonite, 0.6 metres (2 feet) across, outside Portland Museum.

The museum has lots of interesting things to explore! It focuses on four main topics:

• The history of Portland stone, which is a famous type of rock.
• The amazing Jurassic Coast, known for its fossils.
• Shipwrecks that happened around Portland's coast.
• Famous people who had a connection to the island.

You can also see ancient tools and items from the Stone Ages and other periods of history found on the island.

Inside the Cottages

The Marie Stopes Cottage has a small exhibit about Marie Stopes herself. It also shows items connected to the writer Thomas Hardy. There's a "Victorian Corner" too, which displays a wedding dress from a local girl and objects you would have found in a home during the Victorian era. The top floor of the cottage is called the Maritime Room, filled with sea-related items.

The Museum Garden

Outside in the garden, you can find a collection of local fossils. There are also other cool artifacts, like the outer casing of a World War II bomb! This bomb was found on Portland in 1995.

How the Museum is Run

The Portland Museum is now managed by a group called the Portland Museum Trust. This trust is a registered charity, and they took over running the museum on April 1, 2008. A group called the Portland Island Museum Supporters was also started in 2012 to help the museum even more.

See also

• Jurassica, a planned theme park on Portland
• Grove Prison Museum, a museum at HM Prison Portland