Museum of Gloucester

Gloucester Life is a smaller museum in Westgate Street, dealing with the social history of Gloucestershire.

The museum opened on 12 March 1860 as a private venture in three rooms at The Black Swan, provided rent-free by the poet Sydney Dobell. In 1896 the Corporation of the City of Gloucester took over the venture.

The Victorian building, in the early Renaissance style, inspired by the work of T.G. Jackson, is Grade II listed by English Heritage. It was originally the Price Memorial Hall of the Gloucester Science and Art Society, built for Margaret Price as a memorial to her husband William Edwin Price in 1893, and designed by F.S. Waller. The Corporation of the City of Gloucester took over the building as the City Museum & Art Gallery in 1902. Originally only on the ground floor, a first floor was added in 1958 which was opened by the archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler.

In 1976, excavations by the museum's Excavation Unit at St. Oswald's Priory yielded important new finds relating to the Saxon minster founded by Æthelred, Ealdorman of Mercia and his wife Æthelflæd in the 890s.

• Illustration — A fragment from an Anglo-Saxon Cross from St. Oswald's Priory in the museum. (False colourised version on the right.) • Illustration — Newnham-on-Severn from Dean Hill by William Turner, acquired for the museum in 1977 with help from The Art Fund. • Illustration — John and Joan Cooke by an unknown artist. Joan Cooke founded The Crypt School after her husband's death. • Illustration — An 1834 painting of a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig in the museum's art collection. Said to be the largest pig ever bred in Britain. • Illustration — A miniature of Jemmy Wood, the famous Gloucester Miser, from the art collection. Objects in the museum include: • Dinosaur skeletons. • Archaeology, including the Rufus Sita Tombstone, the Iron Age Birdlip Mirror found in 1879. and Bon Marché head, found in 1934. • Natural history objects. • Roman and mediaeval artefacts, including the Gloucester tabula set, a rare 11th or 12th century board game. • Fine and decorative art items, including Delftware, Staffordshire figurines and Arts and Crafts Bowls by Alfred and Louise Powell. • Queen Anne furniture. • Local history items including items relating to the Gloucester Railway Carriage & Wagon Company and a bust of local Methodist preacher George Whitefield.

The art collection includes about 300 paintings including works by J. M. W. Turner and Thomas Gainsborough as well as a painting of Oliver Cromwell without his famous warts. In 1977, the collection acquired a landscape of Newnham-on-Severn from Dean Hill by William Turner of Oxford with help from The Art Fund. Gloucester Regent magazine March 1987 p2-6 discusses the controversial painting of dog excrement on a silver platter. However local artists praised its daring content.