About us

Hampshire Museums Service manages 19 community museums and historic sites across the county, 11 of them in partnership with District Councils, as well as supporting and advising many independent museums.

Specialist staff based at our Headquarters just outside Winchester, care for and manage a wide range of collections and, with our staff based at local museums, make them available to you in many different ways. We offer a touring exhibitions programme, an outreach service, an extensive schools service and special events throughout the year. Our collections based web pages and searchable databases provide a wealth of information about the objects in our care which are also available for individual research. Our collections are used for display, research and access by the public, as well as in touring exhibitions tailored to meet the needs of an audience that can range from pre-school children to experts in their field.

Sites include our flagship museum, ‘Milestones’ located in Basingstoke and our hands on centre ‘SEARCH’ in Gosport. Community museums are the public face of Hampshire Museums Service, where our collections are used to recreate the history that gives each town its distinct character. Most of these sites are managed in partnership with local district councils, but staff also provide support and advice to independent museums across the county.

Specialist staff in Winchester care for collections representing Hampshire's archives, archaeology, history, transport and technology, natural sciences and the arts.Our network of local community museums provide sense of place displays and a varied range of activities and events. We also manage several specialist sites including a working windmill, a World War One warship, a civil war site at Basing House and the remains of a Roman Villa in the New Forest.

We are the lead partner in the South East Museums Hub, which was formed as part of the ‘Renaissance in the Regions’ programme, a Government funded initiative to revitalise regional museums. Our  south east Hub partners are Chatham Historic Dockyard, Oxford University Museums, The Royal Pavilion, Brighton and Hove and MLA South East. I n Hampshire’s case, Renaissance funded projects have enabled us to provide increased access to the collections by improving the cataloguing and management of the items in our care and by creating online exhibitions of, for example, ceramics, textiles and paintings. We seek to continue building active partnerships and are always looking for new ways to make our service even more relevant and accessible to community needs. We welcome any contribution and feedback you would like to offer.

The Archives Service is part of Hampshire County Council’s Museums and Archives Service. At Hampshire Record Office, the catalogue has over 500,000 entries to enable researchers to identify the documents they want to see, while more than 100,000 photographs can be searched and accessed online.