This month’s ‘Into the Archives’ document is a poster advertising an art exhibition held at the Corinium Museum. Titled “Images of Cirencester: Paintings, Prints, Photographs, Drawings of Cirencester As It Was”, the exhibition opened on 3rd November 1984 and ran until 17th February 1985, forty years ago this month. It is reflective of several of the annual exhibitions that were held at Bingham House between 2005 and 2023. The Foundation now has a permanent gallery at Bingham House, alongside an annual exhibition of works by a guest artist (this year being Laurie Plant) as well as seasonal pop-up exhibitions coming soon.
Newspaper reports revealed that the 1980s were rich in art and photographic exhibitions at the Corinium Museum. These included an exhibition of over a hundred photographs taken by Cecil Beaton held in February 1980; a display of 25 Victorian paintings loaned from the Bingham Library Trust held in January 1981; an exhibition of photographs of Cirencester by both professional and amateur photographers, in February 1986.
The Corinium Museum is better known for telling the story of Cirencester’s history. The original museum opened in 1856, prompted by the discovery of two mosaics 7 years before. In 1949 workmen were laying sewage pipes in Dyer Street when they uncovered two mosaics; one depicting the seasons and the other a scene of hunting dogs.
The Earl of Bathurst’s enthusiasm for the history and archaeology of Cirencester led to his decision to open a museum in which to display the mosaics. In the same period a museum was opened at the home of William Cripps. This private museum was generally open by invitation and announcements of these openings frequently appeared in local newspapers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
After the gifting of these collections to the people of Cirencester, the collections were combined. A single museum was opened at its current location in 1938, following an appeal by the Urban District Council. The original museum focused on Cirencester’s Roman archaeology, not least on the mosaics whose discovery led to the original idea for the museum, and on later additions such as the iconic hare mosaic uncovered on Beeches Road in 1971.
Today the museum goes beyond its Roman history and tells the story of prehistoric Cirencester right through to modern times.
