Three brand new exhibitions opening in April 2018

The Museum will feature three very different topics in its new exhibitions opening in April. These will be:

• The Suffragettes' struggle in Leatherhead
• One family's album of memorabilia from the First World War
• The short-lived but highly successful Ashtead Pottery

The road to suffrage for the women of Leatherhead was often bumpy. When the Women’s Suffrage Caravan rolled into town on Saturday, 16 May 1908, it produced riots among many menfolk. In December the local Unionist Club  passed a motion that it was ‘unpropitious’ for legislation on the question of women’s suffrage. Yet from her home in Belmont Road, women’s rights campaigner Marie Stopes had begun to pen Married Love, campaigner Dame Millicent Fawcett would later fascinate her audience at Victoria Hall in 1910, and Emmeline Pankhurst’s arrest and detention at Leatherhead police station would capture the interest of the nation. Leatherhead secured centre stage in the push for women’s rights. 

A notable local figure was Pearl Kew, one of the first women in Leatherhead to own a car which allowed her to drive to work as a teacher in Guildford. When Pearl died recently she left the Museum her father’s scrap-book from the First World War. In at least one incident his horse saved his life and he was allowed to bring it back home to England after the war. Pearl lived her whole life in Leatherhead. Her mother died relatively young when she fell from a bus.

The Ashtead Pottery had a short life, operating in Ashtead village for just 12 years from 1923 to 1935. It was set up to provide jobs for disabled ex-servicemen after the First World War and employed up to 40 men. Its main driving force was Sir Lawrence Weaver, backed by the architect Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis (1883-1978) who built the extraordinary village of Portmeirion in Wales, and Richard Stafford Cripps (1889-1952), the prominent Labour politician and later government minister.  The company's vast array of wares ranged from figurines and commemoratives designed by leading artists of the day, through to everyday crockery in bold bright designs.

Leatherhead Museum set to reopen in April

Leatherhead Museum at Hampton Cottage in Church Street will reopen on Thursday, 5 April 2018 with the official opening on 7 April.