The Cawthorne Museum Society was founded in 1884 by the Rev. Charles Tiplady Pratt who was vicar of the Parish at that time. He encouraged young people of the village to become interested in Natural History, and he formed groups to study collections of birds’ eggs, wild flowers (both are illegal to collect now), fossils, shells, and grasses, and to study astronomy and the weather. These studies were helped by winter seasons of lectures - or “penny readings” as they were known in those days.

The collections were housed in an old cottage, one of two that stood on the site of the present building - the other being used as a meeting house for the Primitive Methodists. This little museum was open on Saturday evenings, members free, non-members one penny admission. According to the Parish Magazines of that time, it must have been very popular.

Very soon the collections of exhibits connected with the variety of study groups, together with curios and curiosities from the village and from those parts of the world visited by the local squire and his family of Cannon Hall, soon outgrew the premises.

The Rev. C.T. Pratt was a forceful character, which reflects throughout his fifty-odd years in the village, and he convinced Sir Walter Spencer Stanhope and his brother Roddam, that there was a need in Cawthorne for a purpose built museum.

Roddam was one of the pre-Raphaelite Group of artists who, for health reasons, lived most of the time in Florence, but he was very keen on the idea of a museum in Cawthorne. He enlisted the aid of his friends, particularly John Ruskin, and the work was soon in hand demolishing the old cottages and laying the foundations of the new museum.

This work was carried out by estate craftsmen when there were no other pressing jobs to be done on the Cannon Hall estate. They used stone and timbers from properties demolished on the estate including a 13th century crook and later post and trusses. The fireplace is another piece of architecture, fooling the visitor about the age of the building This came from the old vicarage in Darton Road, demolished in 18th Century.

Craftsmen indeed they were: they had already completed the restoration of the Parish Church in Cawthorne in 1800, and the building of a girls’ school in the village some years earlier. The foundations for the Museum were laid in Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee year 1887, hence the name. The whole work of the museum took some two years to complete, and the building was officially opened in October 1889 to scenes of great rejoicing, plus a public tea - White tickets at 5pm and Red tickets at 5.45pm.

"It is requested that persons with Red tickets do not try to take tea at 5pm".

   - Rev. C.T. Pratt

The Society continued to flourish and the ‘penny readings’ continue up to the present time, but not at a penny!! We have a record of over 120 years of winter lectures on a vast range of subjects from travel, collecting, local history, ethnography and the like. In 1953 the Museum was offered to the Museum Society by Mrs Stanhope, for the sum of £100. A small amount of money by today’s standards, but raising the money was a problem in 1953, until an anonymous benefactor paid £100 into the Society’s account, with a condition that the Society should raise £200 in the next four years to guarantee adequate maintenance of the Museum.

The collections continued to grow and when Mr Noel Moxon, Secretary of the Society for 40 years, died in 1979, a gift of money from his family sowed the seeds for an extension to the premises. This seed soon grew, and the Trustees and committee once again became fundraisers. Through gifts, covenants and a grant, over £18,000 was raised in 18 months and the work went ahead. The new galleries are furnished and the displays arranged very much in the same way as those in the older part of the building so that all looks in keeping. On 24 th April 1983, the new extension was opened by the Lord Bishop of Wakefield, (Rt. Rev. Colin James) together with the Chairman of South Yorkshire County Council.

In 1984, the Society Centenary was celebrated in Nostel Priory with a concert of Words and Music given by Richard Baker (former BBC newsreader) and Raphael Terroni (Pianist and Professor at the London College of Music). In 1989, a tea was held in the Village Hall for all parishioners to celebrate the Centenary of the opening of the Museum, just as had been done 100 years before at the original opening, but the tickets were all the same colour and everyone had tea at the same time, served by the committee dressed appropriately in Victorian costume.

In 1996, we were delighted to receive a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. We closed down in August 1997 for work to begin, which consisted of refurbishment of timbers and stained glass at the front, a ramp for disabled, plus a toilet and an extension for a workroom or gallery, and an upstairs room for office and working space.

We reopened again after tremendous hard work, in time for Easter 1998, still keeping the character of a Victorian hotch-potch as it has always been, which we consider is the charm and attraction of the Museum.

In 2003, we had a patio built with a grant from YRCC for outdoor displays and fundraising events such as our Annual Coffee morning, which was a huge success when we opened the new venue.

In 2006, numerous improvements were made to the surrounding grounds, again with funding from YRCC plus some part finance from Community Chest and Cawthorne Parish Council.

Original collections are still to be found in the museum and have been added to over the years. Butterflies, fossils, stuffed birds and animals, paintings, domestic bygones, war- time relics, old school books and memorabilia, a collection of souvenir china, royal memorabilia, bottles, a cheetah (stroked by many children over the years), a two headed lamb, a mongoose locked in deadly combat with a cobra, a 9½lb gall stone from a horse (we now know that the stone is from a horse’s intestine as horses do not have gall bladders, but we like to keep the story), a figure of John Wesley made from a whale’s vertebra, coins and medals, a mantrap, a Victorian coffin bier, the work of local artists like Abel Hold, John Nattes, Samuel Swift and Roddam Spencer Stanhope,….the list could go on. The Museum is a typical Victorian hotch-potch and we wouldn’t have it any other way.