Durham University Museum of Archaeology

The Museum of Archaeology in its current form grew out of the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. The link between the two remains a close one. However, the history of the Museum goes back much further, to the founding of the University and the first University Museum.

The first Durham University Museum was founded in the Old Fulling Mill on the banks of the River Wear in 1833, the year after the founding of the University itself. It was the second university museum in England to be opened to the public.

The original museum was a typical Victorian collection of natural history specimens, foreign curios and antiquities. Its first keeper, William Proctor, was appointed “to the charge of the Birds in the Museum” in 1834 at a stipend of £25. Proctor (1798 – 1877) was a carpenter’s apprentice who turned to natural history and specialised in taxidermy. His best-known exploit was a trip to Iceland in search of unknown species. Exhibits in the museum included a great auk, a polar bear’s foot and a stuffed lion. Other highlights included botanical and geological specimens and curiosities such as an admission card to Nelson’s funeral, a pair of Chinese slippers, a silver trophy won at the 1835 regatta and hair balls from a cow’s stomach.

Antiquities such as fragments of St. Cuthbert’s coffin, prehistoric flints, coins from Hadrian’s Wall, a bone skate from York, and miscellaneous objects from Rome, Carthage, Jerusalem and Memphis, were supplemented in 1880 by material excavated from the Roman fort of Vinovia at Binchester (near Bishop Auckland). This formed the basis of the early archaeological collection.