Museum

The Museum at Quex had its origins in a pavilion built in the garden in 1896 to house the growing collection of trophies gathered by the young Percy Powell-Cotton on a series of amazing trips to the wildest areas of northern India and Tibet.

Although a hunter and collector all his life, from the beginning Percy was also interested in the people of the countries he travelled in and he brought back examples of a wide range of material that illustrates their lives and cultures.

Many subsequent trips to Africa added to the collections and, inspired by his lifetime of travel and adventure, Major Powell-Cotton created a unique Museum to reflect the experiences of his travels and show the world to people at home in England.

Following the death of Major Powell-Cotton in 1940, his son Christopher constructed additional galleries to display the family collections of archaeology, ceramics and weaponry. These galleries link physically with the ground floor suite of rooms in Quex House. The Museum now comprises eight galleries displaying many significant and world-class objects, many equal in importance to those held in national collections.