Petworth Cottage Museum
The First Twenty Years
In 2016 we were able to stage an exhibition to celebrate twenty years of the museum. Extracted from the Petworth Society's scrapbooks of cuttings, the pictures and transcripts collected here occupied three sides of the exhibition hall. Five years on we cannot stage another physical exhibition but we can show these cuttings here. Unless otherwise stated the cuttings are all from the Midhurst & Petworth Observer. Click on the pictures to enlarge.
33 Petworth Society, Cottage Museum Evening 15th March 2012
The Petworth Society has been in association with the Petworth Cottage Museum, 346 High Street, since its inception. The two organisations came together for an evening in the Leconfield Hall, devoted to the vision, restoration and ongoing success of the cottage, restored as it could have existed as the home of the Petworth seamstress, Mary Cummings in 1910. It was also an opportunity to join the band of enthusiastic and dedicated stewards. It was Ann Bradley who first began negotiations with the Leconfield Estate in the early 1990s, when the cottage became vacant on the death of the tenant. Research, coincidence and the expertise of architect Raymond Harris led to its opening as a museum in 1996. A year later, Agnes Phelan, [then] 87, who, as a ten-year-old, spent a fortnight's holiday with Mrs. Cummings in 1919, visited to add her memories of the house. This was presented in a moving DVD on the big screen. There followed further screenings of the presentation of a 'Petworth' long-case clock by John Bly (Antiques Roadshow) on behalf of the Friends of the British Antique Dealers Association Trust, and scenes of the cottage and garden before and after restoration. Last year was a very successful season and this was a most interesting and informative evening, an enticement to get involved.
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