Leicestershire Museums
Leicestershire County Council Museums, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5284/1106895. How to cite using this DOI
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Primary contact
Helen
Sharp
Curator (Archaeology)
Leicestershire County Council Museums
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 3997
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1106895
- How to cite using this DOI
Introduction
Leicestershire County Council Museums is the final repository of archaeological archives excavated in the county of Leicestershire (excluding the City of Leicester). Our role is to collect, curate and make available the finds, paper and digital archives generated through archaeological excavation. Objects and paper archives are stored at the Collections Resources Centre near Loughborough and County Hall, Glenfield. From January 2022, all digital material arising from archaeological work in the county will be deposited with ADS to ensure its security, viability and accessibility in the long term.
The purpose of Leicestershire Museums is to safeguard the future of the rich and irreplaceable natural and human heritage of Leicestershire and to provide an accessible, engaging, innovative, sustainable and responsive service of the highest quality.
Formerly one service formed in 1849, the County, City and Rutland Museum Services split in 1997. Leicestershire Museums’ collection includes around 1 million objects covering the areas of natural history, archaeology, fine art, social history and costume which are held in trust for the people of Leicestershire. These are cared for by skilled curatorial, conservation, collections’ care and access staff. The collections cared for by Leicestershire Museums are displayed at Charnwood Museum, Loughborough; Harborough Museum, Market Harborough and Melton Carnegie Museum, Melton Mowbray and Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre. They are also loaned to local and national museums and community groups to enable as wide a reach as possible.
The archaeology collections provide evidence of human activity in what is now Leicestershire. They cover all periods of time from the prehistoric to the modern: some half a million years.
Areas of excellence:
Lower Palaeolithic stone tools; collections from Leicestershire’s scheduled monuments; The Hallaton Treasure; coal mining before the Industrial Revolution; rituals of life and death from the Neolithic to the Medieval period; the Bosworth Battlefield Survey Collection.
