Since the Museum is relatively new, established in 1981, there are fewer archaeological objects in the collection than in older museums. Both the Ulster Museum and British Museum have kindly lent the Museum a range of objects, originally found in County Down, particularly from the Bronze Age, and these can be seen in our permanent exhibition, Down Through Time. Objects found during more recent excavations have been borrowed from the Environment and Heritage Service and Northern Archaeological Consultancy. Alongside these, there is a variety of stone axes and flint tools, from the Middle Stone Age and New Stone Age, which have been given to the Museum over the past 25 years.
The Museum is fortunate that three amateur archaeologists, Robert Davidson, Edward Regan and Arthur Pollock, all lived and worked in our area in the mid-twentieth century. Both Robert Davidson and Edward Regan left large gifts to the Museum. Robert Davidson was an inveterate fieldwalker and collector and his bequest was one of the largest donations that has ever been given to the Museum. It included archaeological objects, engravings, maps, paintings and postcards as well as an enormous collection of books which our now in the Museum’s library. He worked closely with the late Dudley Waterman during the 1950s to 1970s and wrote notes of his finds in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology. Edward Regan discovered new Middle Stone Age sites around Strangford Lough, which contributed to research in this area. Arthur Pollock will be remembered particularly for his find of the Bronze Age gold on Cathedral Hill, but he also worked on the site at Meadowlands, Downpatrick, with Dudley Waterman where they found evidence of Bronze Age houses. He was probably also responsible for finding some medieval floor tiles, which were re-discovered in a cottage, in which he once lived, on the Castleward estate, and brought into the Museum by Mrs Anne Sterritt.
If you would like further information about the archaeology collection, please contact us.
