Amberley Museum is an open-air industrial heritage museum at Amberley, near Arundel in West Sussex, England. The museum is owned and operated by Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre, a not-for-profit company and registered charity, and has the support of an active Friends organisation. The items in the Museums collection are held by The Amberley Museum Trust
The museum was founded in 1978 by the Southern Industrial History Centre Trust and has previously been known as the Amberley Working Museum, Amberley Chalk Pits Museum, and Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre. It is located within historic chalk quarries. Chalk was extracted and processed for lime on site for more than 100 years, and the museum still houses a number of its original lime kilns. In addition, holdings and exhibitions at the museum cover a diversity of industrial and local heritage collections, including narrow-gauge railways, local bus services, and a multitude of light and rural industrial subjects.
Location
The open-air museum is 36-acre (146,000 m2), located next to Amberley railway station and dedicated to the industrial heritage of South East England and with a special interest in aspects of the history of communications and transport.
The museum is sited in a former chalkquarry where the chalk was converted into lime for use in mortar and cement, and remaining on site are several kilns, including a De Witt set, and associated buildings including offices, bagging shed and locomotive shed.
Also to be seen is the quarry tunnel, which appeared as Mainstrike Mine in the James Bond film A View to a Kill. Additional buildings have been relocated or replicated on the site and exhibition halls added. The natural history and geology of the site can be seen from a nature trail.
Exhibits and collections
Wheelwright's ShopElectricity PavilionSawing Logs at the timber yard
The site hosts a range and exhibitions and collections most of which can be seen though they may not be operational when the museum is open.
Print Shop - The Museum has a print shop that houses printing machinery and artefacts, including a Columbian ‘Eagle’ flat-bed press (about 1856), engraved copper plates, Linotype machines used in newspaper production, and an Albion lever press amongst many others. Volunteers run the print shop and operate many of the machines to demonstrate for our visitors and to produce museum publications.
Machine Shop includes display of various machine tools and hand tools used for metalwork. Machine tools are still in use for maintenance of exhibits
Fire Station, reproduction of a typical 1950s building completed in 2008 and now housing several roadworthy historic fire engines and an impressive collection of displays and exhibits primarily relating to the history of fire-fighting in Sussex.
The Amberley Museum Railway is a 2ft (610mm) narrow-gauge railway and railway exhibition hall devoted to British industrial narrow-gauge railways. There are 45 locomotives, with 5 being steam powered, 29 internal combustion and 4 battery electric, and around 80 items of rolling stock, chiefly goods wagons, based largely on the collection of the former Brockham Museum (relocated here in 1982). There is special interest in railway material from the Dorking Greystone Lime Company and also from the Groudle Glen Railway in the Isle of Man. Of the 5 steam locos, one currently operational.
Southdown Bus collection
Southdown Leyland Cub No. 524 passes the Tool and Trades History Society Building
The collection completed by a reconstructed 1920s SouthdownBus garage. The depot houses working buses chiefly from the local operator Southdown Motor Services based on the collection of the Southdown Omnibus Trust
On open days the Southdown Bus collection operates bus rides throughout the day. The collection of vehicles is listed below.
Operational buses
1914 Worthing Motor Services/Southdown Tilling Stevens open-top 41-seater IB 552. (Restricted use because the bus is fragile)
1922 Southdown Leyland N Type open-top 51-seater CD 5125.
Amberley
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