Winchcombe Museum

Winchcombe Museum sits in the old town hall on the High Street and is run entirely by volunteers. The collection covers around two thousand years of the town's history, from its Saxon origins as a royal capital of Mercia through the medieval wool trade and on to more recent local life. Objects in the collection include Roman finds from the nearby Spoonley Wood villa, medieval artefacts, and items related to Hailes Abbey and Sudeley Castle.

The star of the museum for many visitors since 2021 is the display dedicated to the Winchcombe Meteorite. On 28 February 2021, a fireball was seen across much of the UK, and a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite fell in and around Winchcombe, making it the first witnessed meteorite fall to be recovered in Britain for around thirty years. The museum holds donated fragments from the fall and tells the full story of the event: what a carbonaceous chondrite is, why this particular specimen is scientifically significant, and how it was tracked and recovered by researchers. The bulk of the recovered material is held at the Natural History Museum in London, but the Winchcombe Museum display gives children a genuine local connection to one of the most remarkable events in recent British science.

The museum occupies two floors of the former town hall and takes around an hour to go round properly. Activity days and events for children run on selected dates during school holidays; check the website before visiting for current details.

Good for: history, rainy-day. Ages: 3–4, 5–7, 8–11, 12+.