Museum

The CNHSS Museum holds one of the best collections of archaeological and geological material available outside central London.

The museum was endowed by an extraordinary early 20th century collector, W.H. Bennett. His collection, and others added since, include first class examples of artefacts from all the prehistoric periods from the early Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age. The Palaeolithic is particularly well represented by many artefacts from famous sites like Swanscombe and also faunal material, including mammoth teeth and tusks from Croydon and the surrounding Surrey hills. There is also an excellent reference collection of Mesolithic axes dredged from the Thames and examples of microliths and Neolithic axes, scrapers and so on.

Most later periods especially Roman and Medieval are also represented. The strength of the collection is its local bias with finds from the Croydon area and Surrey being especially well represented.

The local geology is Chalk and the museum holds many hundreds of superb examples of fossils from this.

A selection of artefacts from the museum

Echinoid and spines	Medieval floor tile	A “Desert Rose” mineral cluster – of gypsum
Echinoid, micraster, belemnite fossils in flint and Chalk	Bellarmine jug	Lower Paleolithic ficron type handaxe
Mammoth tooth	Lower Paleolithic handaxe	Norwood jug ca 1250 AD