page_title: Cuming Museum
hierarchical_section_title: Cuming Museum
caption_attribution_description: Southwark Vestry Hall - former Town Hall of the Metropolitan Borough of Southwark. Walworth Road, Southwark, London. Taken by C Ford, 29th February 04.
context_page_description: The Cuming Museum in Walworth Road in Elephant and Castle, within the London Borough of Southwark, London, England, houses the collection of the Cuming family and is also a museum of Southwark's history.
  Richard Cuming started his collecting life when he was only five with some fossils and a coin that had been given to him by a family friend. That ignited a passion for collecting, which lasted for his lifetime. He made his first significant purchases in 1806 at the sale of the Leverian Museum. His interests covered geology, scientific equipment and animalia. The collection was bequeathed to the people of Southwark by his son, Henry Syer Cuming, in 1902, and the museum opened in 1906. As described in Cuming's will, it comprised "My Museum illustrative of Natural History, Archaeology and Ethnology with my coins and medals and... other curios".
  The museum galleries were moved from the first floor of the Newington Public Library to the building next door, the former Walworth Town Hall, in 2006.
context_section_description: The Cuming Museum in Walworth Road in Elephant and Castle, within the London Borough of Southwark, London, England, houses the collection of the Cuming family and is also a museum of Southwark's history.
  Richard Cuming (1777–1870) started his collecting life when he was only five with some fossils and a coin that had been given to him by a family friend. That ignited a passion for collecting, which lasted for his lifetime. He made his first significant purchases in 1806 at the sale of the Leverian Museum. His interests covered geology, scientific equipment and animalia. The collection was bequeathed to the people of Southwark by his son, Henry Syer Cuming, in 1902, and the museum opened in 1906. As described in Cuming's will, it comprised "My Museum illustrative of Natural History, Archaeology and Ethnology with my coins and medals and... other curios".
  The museum galleries were moved from the first floor of the Newington Public Library to the building next door, the former Walworth Town Hall, in 2006.
  Also of interest is that at the end of this block of buildings, on Larcom Street, Charles Babbage, the Victorian mechanical computer pioneer, was born in 1791 although the original house has been demolished. A blue plaque records his birth.
  On 25 March 2013, a fire seriously damaged the Walworth Town Hall. The collections suffered only a very small loss, but the museum galleries were very severely affected. Around 98% of objects on display at the time of the fire were recovered and were placed in storage awaiting a solution to the display of the collections and public access to them.
caption: The Cuming Museum
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