Bridport Museum and Art Gallery was founded in 1932 in one of the town’s oldest buildings, known as the Old Castle. It was an innovative step for a small industrial town in rural West Dorset. Many much larger places did not have a civic art gallery or Museum in the 1930s.
Bridport’s good fortune was based upon what the Bridport News called ‘Mr Codd’s munificent gift’ of the building and a collection of his own work together with the civic pride of the council who were willing to fund the conversion of what had been the Conservative Club into a gallery and museum space.
On a Saturday afternoon in May 1932, a large group of Bridport’s great and the good gathered for the official opening; to hear the speeches, to see some of the donors and to explore the new gallery and museum. The ceremony took place in the main room on the ground floor which had been set out to house the museum and which already contained ‘many objects of interest to not only the archaeologically minded but to the laymen in general’. Later that day the art gallery and museum was opened up for free to the public, although not to children. From then on, admission was charged to adults and to accompanied children.
The ceremony was attended by aldermen and councillors as well as officers of the council (the Borough had a surveyor, electrical engineer and accountant) together with men and women of the town’s influential families (Colfox, Gundry, Palmer as well as the Misses Reynolds) and visitors such as the Mayor of Weymouth. The latter responded to his cordial reception in the ‘wild and woolly west’ by saying that they in Weymouth were always ready to learn as they hadn’t yet achieved their own art gallery and museum. He hoped that the museum opened that day would be the success hoped for. Amidst laughter he said, “Your Mayor talked of filling it. Well, if you want a few old fossils … but there, I suppose you have plenty of your own.”
The Mayor welcomed everyone to ‘this most unique occasion’. One significant absence was Percy Codd, a long-retired Captain in the Royal Engineers and amateur artist, who had given the building to the Council on condition that the necessary alterations were made so that it could be a gallery and museum. He was represented by a fellow resident of Bath, Mrs WH Hildebrand (and her daughter), who had also loaned paintings to the new gallery to augment the more than 100 pictures that Codd had donated to form the nucleus of what was felt to be ‘a charming collection’. The most famous paintings on display had been loaned by the son of the Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt, who had recently come to live in Walditch. Codd had also compiled a catalogue of the approximately 150 exhibits in the crowded art gallery which was located in the upstairs rooms of The Old Castle.
The upstairs gallery of paintings
Speeches focused on thanking the man who had made possible this initiative. Codd although ‘a gentleman more closely identified with the town of Beaminster’ where his father was vicar for many years, had made a magnificent gift to Bridport and had been instrumental in attracting gifts and loans of paintings from others. It was also felt to be most gratifying that one of the most ancient, and certainly one of the most picturesque, buildings in the borough should be forever the property of the town. It had been feared that when The Old Castle was put up for sale that a modern shop front would take the place of its old mullioned windows. It was now hoped that was inaugurated that day would be the nucleus of a local museum ‘on a line with that most satisfactory one at Dorchester’. Major Gundry commented, ‘Although the museum exhibits were not numerous they would probably result in other residents and people interested in the ancient borough contributing articles which would prove of intense interest to their descendants’.
With the speeches over, the company proceeded on a tour of inspection through the building, afterwards returning to the main downstairs room where they were guests at tea with the Mayor and Mayoress. The catering was provided by Mr ER George of the Cafe on East Street. And so began the story of Bridport Museum
(Source: Bridport News, 3.6.1932)
A building with as much history as its artefacts!
Bridport Museum is one of the town’s oldest buildings, but its origins remain a mystery!
The fine 16th-century façade is all that remains of the original building. There was a fire in in 1876 which destroyed the back. After that, it was restored pretty much to the structure you see today. The building is Grade II* Listed because its architecture is so important.
We don’t know what the building was originally used for. For many years it was known as ‘The Castle’. This may have come from its proximity to the area known from early documents as Castleyhay, or ‘place of castle’. Alternatively, there may actually have been some kind of fortified building originally on the site.
The northern boundary of Anglo-Saxon and early Medieval Bridport lies a few feet north of the building and it is likely that a stronghold building would have stood at the entrance to the town. In 1876 two thatched cottages at the rear caught fire and the building was severely gutted.
Over the years, it has been a pub, a Conservative Club and an Oddfellow’s Hall.
You can explore historical photographs of the building and the town on our Flickr site.
