NEWS RELEASES
Biggest Stories Told Small
16 July 2008
On 18th July the BIG stories of Horsham’s past are revealed in a perfectly formed small space. For example we are talking of a 100-million-year-old Horsham iguanodon that shook the Victorian world, and of the £100m redevelopment of Horsham town centre that surprised today’s generation. We are also talking about a Horsham fireman who changed Britain’s Pre History. Three BIG stories told in a room dating back to 1420 AD. In addition we also have space to show off some of the Museums other treasures all in a room smaller than most people’s living room.
In 1840 Horsham’s dinosaur hunter George Bax Holmes was shown the stone being used to build St Mark’s Chapel of Ease. There he found remains of an iguanodon, a plant eating dinosaur. Some of the fossils were so large that the find became known as The Great Horsham Iguanodon. Some 12 years later the remains were used as the model for the iguanodon in the world’s first theme park built around Crystal Palace. For the first time some of these fossil remains will be going on long term public display in the town of their discovery having lain in store at Brighton and Hove’s city Booth’s Museum. Along with these fossils will be evidence of pterodactyls flying over Southwater, crocodiles swimming around Horsham and other iguanodons living in Horsham over 100 million years ago.
The Chapel of Ease would be later transformed into St Mark’s Church. The Church would be at the centre of the transformation of Horsham that occurred only 20 years ago. This was certainly the biggest event to have hit Horsham in the 20th century. Now thanks to the donation of the biggest town centre model of Horsham ever produced it can be told in a newly created space within the small but perfectly formed room. The model now forms the centrepiece of a permanent display that tells how Horsham changed and transformed itself, a story that those who were living in Horsham twenty years ago were part of.
The other BIG story told in the new gallery is how the Captain of Horsham’s voluntary fie brigade changed British prehistory by identifying for the first time Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic. Captain Honywood did this by using prehistoric flint tools found in Horsham. That was in the 1870s. Some 50 years later another archaeologist would argue that Horsham was the birth place of British culture – few stories are bigger than that and at Horsham Museum we have the evidence on display. Also on show are stone tools dating back 200,000 years, and Roman rubbish found at Hills Place, proving that Romans did live in Horsham.
The new gallery opens on Friday 18th July – another great reason for visiting Horsham Museum along with its temporary exhibitions on Witchcraft and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Big stories, fascinating objects and all told in a medieval building.
For further information please contact Jeremy Knight, Curator.
Horsham Museum
9 Causeway, Horsham, West Sussex RH12 1HE
Tel: (01403) 254959 Fax: (01403) 282594
Email: museum@horsham.gov.uk
www.horshammuseum.org