Our Collections
Starting with the breath-taking Boat Hall, our ground floor displays showcase Sheringham’s unique collection of lifeboats, placing them alongside historic fishing boats and seaside stories. Peer into a fisherman’s cottage, hear about the miracles of boat building and wonder at the many crafts and traditions of everyday fisher-family life.
On the first floor you will find diverse displays include the charming, colourful shops of Shannock Street, two changing exhibition galleries and the action-packed Sheringham Shoal Wind Farm Visitor Centre – designed by one of the teams behind the Science Museum. You’ll find out more about Sheringham during the war years and about the remarkable Upcher family of Sheringham Park. Then you can set out along the gantry for spell-binding views of the great life boats below.
Our Olive Edis gallery now offers information about the life and achievements of this amazing woman. Based in Sheringham for about fifty years, she operated a successful photographic studio where she made portraits of the great and the good - princes, prime ministers, poets and (especially) our Sheringham fishermen. World traveller, music critic, award-winning photographer and a much-respected community member, she lived a very full life. Visitors can photograph each other, copying Olive's distinctive style in our recreation of her studio.
Sheringham and Great Yarmouth both claim the less-than-enviable distinction of being the first town in Great Britain to have been bombed from the air. Whatever the truth - and it seems to depend on whose watch is to be believed - it was a most significant event, and we have gathered items from the collection to illustrate the story.
Our new second floor houses our last lifeboat. It's a rigid inflatable Atlantic 75 class inshore boat, purchased by the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows on its retirement from service and very generously donated to the museum.
This floor also provides our major summer exhibition space, which doubles as our education area for both school and adult education during the rest of the year, and our members' Research Room.
There is a lot to see at Sheringham Museum - this review has hardly touched the collection. The history of the town is rich with stories of brave lifeboatmen, amazing women, explorers, great musicians, artists, scientists, minor royalty, sportsmen ..... come and let us tell you about them!