March and District Museum

Welcome!

Opening Hours: Wednesday and Saturday
10:30 - 15:30
All Year Except Christmas and New Year

Group Visits are available at other times, please visit the Group Visits page for more information.

Entry to the Museum is free however donations are much appreciated.

Starting Saturday 2nd June

Diamond Jubilee Exhibition

The exhibition is based on the Souvenir Booklet produced after the events of the Coronation Celebrations beginning on Tuesday 2nd June 1953 and ending on Saturday 6th June. Additional photographs have been produced from negatives rescued from Cochran & Clarke's photographic shop when it was demolished to allow the expansion of Barclays Bank. The image below is one of these pictures.

We are very lucky because one of our Museum Members, Mrs Joan Mulgrew, was on the Executive Committee organising the events of 1953 and, at 92, she is fit and well and told us of her recollections of the celebrations. Click on the spot to hear all about the events of 1953.

The exhibition will also allow you to read about life in March in 1953 and some of the noteworthy events, both local and international, in the last 60 years.

Also open Sunday 3rd June

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About the Museum

The March and District Museum Society was established, initially as an Historical Society, by a group of prominent March people in 1972. The Museum building was erected in 1851 by March Consolidated Charities as a girls' grammar school to be known as the South District Girls' School. It was one of three Carr stone buildings in the town, probably built by Morton Peto, who was involved in the building of the March railway.

As the population of March grew the School Board School, which replaced the National School, fast became overcrowded and the girls' school became an annex for both boys and girls from the Board School. After 1904, when a new school for senior pupils was opened in Burrowmoor Road, it was used for both mixed infants and juniors.In 1934 because of the rapid increase in the population of the town, a new senior school was built in Robingoodfellow's Lane and the Burrowmoor School became the junior school.

The Museum building then became the South District Infants School and remained so until the school closed in 1975. In 1976 the premises were purchased by March Town Council to be used as a Museum and was opened as such in 1977.

Set up as a local folk museum, there are a number of displays showing the life and times of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries and ongoing to the present day.

The museum is run by volunteers, and there are no paid staff. It is a registered Charity - number 286115. We are also accredited by the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council, accreditation number 672.