Petersfield Museum, based at the late 19th Century Magistrates’ Courthouse behind the Police Station, records and preserves the history of Petersfield for current and future generations. A short walk across St Peter’s Church Yard, the Flora Twort Gallery houses the Bedales Historic Costume Collection and work by local artist Flora Twort. Exhibitions are changed regularly with different artefacts, costumes and paintings.

Social History

The Museum holds an extensive collection of objects, maps, photographs, oral history, and archival material on the history of Petersfield and the surrounding area.

The collections illustrate the large variety of industries including agriculture, brewing, and rubber manufacture, which dominated the town for centuries.

A market town for over 700 years, Petersfield has also been home to innovators, artists and musicians of international repute.

The exhibitions are changed annually with new themes and objects from the collection.

Bedales Historic Costume
Collection

Bedales School began collecting historic clothes in the 1940s, before they were seen as valuable collectors’ items, and then used them as costumes in school plays. The school donated 1000 pieces of this collection to Petersfield Museum where is it is now available to view on display and for researchers.

The collection is varied and includes crinolines, ball gowns, hunting coats, hats, mourning wear, swimwear, underwear, debutante gowns, and an elegant England First XI ladies’ hockey dress from the 1890s (with lace cuffs!)

The oldest pieces are women’s dresses from the 1720s; the oldest male costume is a coat and long waistcoat, beautifully hand-embroidered in silk, from the 1770s.

Each year a different selection from our comprehensive costume collection is put on display.

Flora Twort

Flora Twort (1893-1985) took up painting when she was four. She studied at the London School of Art, the London Polytechnic and the Slade School of Art. She moved to Petersfield at the end of the First World War and opened a book shop at 1 and 2 The Square. She used the top floor of the bookshop as her studio and painted many scenes depicting the life of the town and its residents. In 1948 Flora moved into her new studio in Church Path.

She gave up painting at the age of 81. Many of her works hung in The Royal Academy and in other London galleries.

The watercolours, pastels and sketchbooks that are on show in the Flora Twort Gallery have been selected from a much larger collection and every year new works are chosen for display.