The History of Warwickshire Museum Service continued
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The museum was initially only open to subscribers and their families, with each subscriber having the privilege of bringing a friend to the museum. Non-subscribers had to pay one shilling, a significant amount in those days. This must have excluded the majority of the local population. Eventually the museum opened its doors to the general public for free from Whit Monday 1847. The museum committee reported that ‘Hundreds of visitors conducted themselves with the utmost decorum.’
The Society collected a wide range of materials, including zoological, botanical, rocks, minerals, fossils and archaeological objects and skeletons. This was not limited to any geographical area. This policy of collecting had changed over the years to only accepting objects with Warwickshire connections.
The ammonite above is a fossilised shell of a long extinct coiled shellfish roughly 200 million years old, related to the modern nautilus. This ammonite is on display in the Market Hall Museum in the Geology gallery.
Bad times for Warwickshire Museum
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