The red brick building which houses the museum and gives it its name was erected in 1763 as the parish poorhouse, and later as its workhouse, until the number of inmates exceeded the space available and a new workhouse was built in Fairmile. The building housed Herbert Druitt's private museum from 1919 until 1952 when it became a public museum. It has been managed by Hampshire Museums Service since 1971 and the present curator is Jim Hunter.
Here the children of the town's poor were employed making fusee chains - the tiny links which where contained within the mechanisms of Victorian pocket watches. The fusee chains were also made in a factory, still standing in Bargates, which was owned by William Hart. Mr. Hart's son, Edward, learnt taxidermy from his father and opened a museum in the High Street for which hundreds of birds were shot. Many cases he prepared are now displayed at the museum.
Among the museum's other exhibits are the extensive collections of arts and antiquities of the antiquarian Herbert Druitt whose sister Charlotte bequethed the family home, Druitt House, in High Street to the town as its first public library and gardens.
There is the reconstruction of one of the Saxon burials uncovered during the building of the Saxon Centre which revealed a Saxon cemetry near the mill stream, as well as other information on life in Saxon Chrsitchurch .
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