Steyning Museum

Step through the entrance on Church Street and the sound of modern Steyning fades behind you. Around you, Neolithic flint tools sit alongside a Saxon brooch, a sword found in the thatch of a cottage called Smugglers shares the rooms with a Victorian pram, and a strange trumpet-shaped instrument, the Ashurst vamping horn, is one of only six of its kind known to survive in England. This is Steyning Museum, which tells the story of Steyning, Bramber, Upper Beeding, Ashurst, Wiston and Botolphs from prehistory to the present day.

A Town That Deserved Its Own Museum

Steyning is no ordinary Sussex town. Domesday Book, completed in 1086, records a thriving port with a market, a royal mint, the church founded by Saint Cuthman and one other church. Cuthman was the Saxon holy man who, legend says, pushed his invalid mother in a wooden cart until its rope broke at this spot at the foot of the South Downs, which he took as a sign from God to stay and build a church. Pilgrims are thought to have visited his tomb. The town's fortunes rose and fell with the River Adur, which began to silt up in the fourteenth century, and with the railway, which arrived in 1861 and closed in 1966.

The museum began in 1983, when the Steyning Museum Trust was set up as a community project to tell the story of Steyning's past. Its first collections came from the Steyning Society, the parish, St Andrew's Church, the town's solicitors and the Steyning Building Society, and donations from local people soon followed. In 1990 the museum moved into a new building on Church Street, behind the library and opposite the Norman church of St Andrew and St Cuthman.

What the Walls Hold

The museum's collections span the full sweep of Steyning's past. In the earliest cases are Neolithic flint tools about five thousand years old, a scraper from Chanctonbury Ring and a knife from Cissbury Ring, and a tiny Roman pot from Chanctonbury dating from soon after the Roman invasion of AD 43: evidence of the people who lived on this stretch of the Downs long before Cuthman arrived. An early Saxon bronze brooch recalls the first settlers on the site of the town, and two carved stone heads probably came from the Norman church, begun in about 1090.

But it is the more particular, more human objects that stay with you longest. The Ashurst vamping horn, a tin-plate cone about two feet seven inches long made in 1770, is part musical instrument, part megaphone: it was used to lead the singing in Ashurst church. It is one of only six known to survive in England and is on loan from the parish church of St James, Ashurst. Then there is a section of wooden rail from the Quaker meeting house where William Penn preached.

An English small-sword of about 1690 to 1720 was found in the thatch of a Steyning cottage called Smugglers, where, the museum says, a light in a tiny gable window once warned that the Excise men were in town. A Victorian pram and household items chart the quieter domestic history of the town's later years. And throughout the museum, a large collection of old photographs and documents follows Steyning from Saxon settlement and Norman port to railway town and the present day.

The museum also keeps a reference library and archives, used by local historians, family historians and anyone curious enough to dig deeper into the history of Steyning, Bramber, Upper Beeding, Ashurst, Wiston and Botolphs.

A Living Institution

Today the Steyning Museum Trust is a registered charity (number 1169540), and the museum holds full Accreditation from Arts Council England, a demanding standard for the care of collections. It is run entirely by volunteers, through a Management Committee on behalf of the Trustees.

A regular change of temporary exhibitions and events gives returning visitors something new, and the collections continue to grow as local people give artefacts, photographs and family papers.

Visiting Steyning Museum

According to the Steyning Museum website, the museum is open Wednesday to Sunday and on Bank Holiday Mondays, from 10am to 4pm, and admission is free. It sits on Church Street behind the library, opposite the church of St Andrew and St Cuthman, with parking at nearby Cuthman Field. The museum can take wheelchairs and prams. Bus 2 from Brighton and Shoreham stops on the High Street, and Compass bus 100 from Burgess Hill, Pulborough and Horsham also stops in Steyning.

This article was written by EachMoment, which digitises old photographs, films and tapes, as part of a series on local heritage.