Southend Central Museum facts for kids
Central Museum, Southend
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| Established | 1981 |
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| Location | Southend-on-Sea, Essex |
| Type | Local history |
| Key holdings | Prittlewell Anglo-Saxon burial; The London shipwreck |
| Collections | Costume, fine art, local history, natural history, archaeology |
| Architect | Henry Thomas Hare |
| Owner | Southend-on-Sea Borough Council |
| Public transit access |  Southend Victoria |
The Central Museum is a museum in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England. The museum houses collections of local and natural history and contains a planetarium constructed by astronomer Harry Ford in 1984.
The museum was opened in April 1981 in a Grade II listed building that was previously Southend's first free public library. The library service had moved to a new purpose built site on Victoria Avenue, which opened on 20 March 1974.
The building
The Museum was originally built in 1905 as a free library, with £8000 of funding from Andrew Carnegie. The architect was Henry Thomas Hare.
The collections
The Museum features a collection of original Ekco radios, manufactured by E.K. Cole & Co. Ltd. (or 'Ekco') formerly based in Southend. In the 1930s, this company was one of Britain's largest radio manufacturers.
The displays also include local and natural history and archaeology.
In May 2019 a new gallery opened to display the archaeological finds from the Royal Saxon tomb in Prittlewell, an Anglo-Saxon burial mound in the suburb of Prittlewell that was discovered in 2003 as a result of a road-widening scheme. The excavations unearthed a number of Anglo-Saxon artefacts that suggested a high-status burial; carbon dating has revealed that the burial probably dates from about 580 AD, and may have been the tomb of Sæxa, brother of Sæberht, King of Essex.
Additional photographs
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Collection of Ekco radios on show at the Central Museum
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Butterflies from the reserve natural history collections of Southend Museums Service
