February 2023 – Red Teddy
Red Teddy and his family were saved by their psychic spaniel Merry when a bomb hit their home at 10 Melbury Gardens in Wimbledon in 1944. Visit the museum to see him and read more about him here.
March 2023 – Toynbee’s book
Joseph Toynbee’s 1863 book “Hints on the Formation of Local Museums”. Toynbee was a doctor and founder member of the Wimbledon Village Club. He hoped that Club and Museum would enable Wimbledon residents to “take part in one of the most delightful of duties viz the conveyance to the minds of others of an interest in those pleasing and elevating subjects from which, happily, [their] own minds derive gratification”. Sadly Toynbee died young, before he was able to make his dream museum a reality, but his book inspired the generation who founded the museum in 1916.
April 2023 – Georgian Biscuit Brake
Our beautiful Georgian Biscuit Brake is about 300 years old, and a very rare survival. It is an elm wood table specially designed for beating the dough to make the crisp biscuits very popular in Georgian times. It had a special giant “rolling pin” mechanism. In 1925 the museum’s first curator, Margaret Grant, observed a similar one in use in Glasgow, also made of wood. Later Victorian examples were made of iron and steel. It came from Wallis’s Bakery at 45 Wimbledon High Street, on the corner with Lingfield Road. It was in use there for more than 200 years before being donated to the museum.
May 2023 – Coronation Mug
This gorgeous Coronation Mug commemorates the crowning of King George V and his wife, Mary of Teck, as King and Queen of the United Kingdom in 1911. It was donated to the Museum on 1st October 1917 by Miss Bather, the daughter of Dr Francis Bather, who was the first chairman of the Museum Committee.
June 2023 – Spencer Manor House
This beautifully detailed model is of the Spencer Manor House, later known as Wimbledon Park House, the last of Wimbledon’s lost manor houses, demolished in 1949. Local historian Matthew Hillier has explored the house’s history and its connection to the author Raymond Briggs, best known for ‘The Snowman’ and ‘Father Christmas’.
September 2023 – William Wilberforce Plaque
This plaque was created in memory of William Wilberforce, who led the parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade. It was commissioned by the Wimbledon Society in 1959 and made at Wimbledon College of Art. There is an identical plaque on the stable wall of Wilberforce’s house on Southside, marking the last remaining part of the house where he entertained Pitt, and other parliamentary colleagues.
