Our ‘Wider World’ case in our Explorers & Collectors gallery features two gold plated knives, bought back from Africa by a Royal Navy officer called Boteler. Part of the navy’s mission was to suppress the slave trade and Boteler’s ship captured several slave trading ships during the voyage. Collected in 1821-1826, the small dagger in […]

  Found isolated and alone in the Kentish soil, and now residing in The Beaney is a creature so legendary it has been part of folklore since early antiquity. Made from gold and reduced to miniature, the creature’s small size does nothing to diminish its marvel. In Old English (or Anglo Saxon, from whence this […]

When the Palace of Westminster was being rebuilt after the fire of 1834, it was decided to include in the House of Lords a series of statues representing the barons associated with the Magna Carta....

The tale of Rupert Bear begins with the story of the Caldwell Family. The Caldwell’s were a family of artists who worked at Canterbury Cathedral on the restoration of stained-glass windows. Their daughter, Mary, went on to attend Simon Langton Girls’ School, then studied at the Sidney Cooper School of Art in Canterbury before going on to marry a man named Herbert Tourtel.

Created by BAFTA award-winning Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate through their company Smallfilms, Bagpuss was filmed in Firmin’s barn in Blean, just outside Canterbury.