Totnes Museum facts for kids

The Victorian nursery at Totnes Museum, with the courtyard through the window

A turret clock mechanism by William Stumbels on display at Totnes Museum

Totnes Museum (aka Totnes Elizabethan House Museum) is a local museum in the town of Totnes, south Devon, in southwest England.

The museum is housed in an Elizabethan merchant's house that was built c.1575 for the Kelland family. The house has many original features and has been carefully restored.

Totnes Museum has twelve galleries, a courtyard, and a herb garden. The collections date from 5000BC onwards, including coins minted in Totnes during Saxon times, and concern the cultural, economic, and social history of Totnes.

The galleries include a Babbage Room, presenting Charles Babbage, the Victorian mathematician who invented the Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, mechanical precursors of the modern computer. Babbage spent his youth in Totnes and studied at King Edward VI Grammar School there.

There is a Study Centre at the rear of the building which contains an archive of Totnes-related material – books, fiches, transcripts, photographs, and local newspapers from 1860 – of particular interest to those seeking information on Totnes history, buildings and their own family connections in the area. Experienced researchers are on hand to help on Thursdays and Fridays.