About
Boston Guildhall Museum occupies one of the finest surviving medieval merchant guild halls in England, a magnificent fifteenth-century brick building on South Street that has served as the administrative, commercial, and judicial heart of the Lincolnshire market town of Boston for over five hundred years. Founded as the guild hall of the Corporation of Boston in 1450, the building combines magnificent civic architecture with a history of national importance — for it was in the cells below the great hall that a group of Puritan separatists, later known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were imprisoned in 1607 after their failed attempt to flee England for religious freedom in Holland.
The Pilgrim Fathers story is the Guildhall's most celebrated historical connection and one of the pivotal episodes in the founding of English-speaking America. In 1607, a group of separatist Puritans from Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, led by figures including William Brewster and William Bradford (later the second Governor of Plymouth Colony), attempted to charter a ship from Boston to escape the religious persecution of James I's England. Betrayed by the ship's captain, they were arrested by local magistrates and held in the Guildhall's cells before being released without major penalty. They eventually escaped via Amsterdam and Leiden in Holland before boarding the Mayflower from Southampton in 1620 and founding Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. The cells where they were held survive in the Guildhall basement and can be visited.
Beyond the Pilgrim Fathers connection, the Guildhall's collections and architecture document the remarkable story of Boston itself — in the fourteenth century one of England's most prosperous ports and a major European trading centre, handling more wool than any English town outside London. Boston's decline from European significance to modest market town is one of the more dramatic reversals in English urban history, documented through the Guildhall's extensive collections of civic records, trade artefacts, and local history material. The magnificent Great Hall where civic business was conducted for five centuries conveys the ambitions and achievements of a medieval merchant community at the height of its prosperity.
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Annual Visitors (2019)
18,000
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
📅 Best Times to Visit
Quietest: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
Busiest: Saturday
💡 Weekday morning for quiet exploration of the cells and Great Hall
💡 Visitor Tips
- The cells where the Pilgrim Fathers were held are accessed via steep, narrow stairs and require physical agility — if you have mobility limitations, check with staff whether the cell access is possible before paying admission. The Great Hall and ground floor museum are accessible without stairs.
- Combine the Guildhall with St Botolph's Church (3 minutes walk), whose tower climb gives spectacular views over the Lincolnshire fens and whose interior is magnificent in its own right. John Cotton, a later vicar here, led the Puritan emigration that named Boston, Massachusetts — the church-Guildhall combination is the complete Boston American story.
- For American visitors with ancestral connections to the Pilgrim Fathers or Plymouth Colony, the Guildhall's archive service may be able to assist with research. Boston's connections to New England are well documented in the Guildhall's records. Contact the museum in advance to arrange archival research.
- Boston's Wednesday and Saturday markets are among Lincolnshire's finest — if timing your visit to coincide with market day, the town has a lively atmosphere and provides a good sense of the commercial tradition that has defined Boston since medieval times.
- The museum is relatively inexpensive and compact — allowing about 90 minutes for the Guildhall museum and then 45 minutes in St Botolph's church makes a satisfying half-day historical experience in the heart of Lincolnshire.
- RSPB Frampton Marsh (8 miles) is one of England's finest coastal nature reserves, with excellent populations of waders and wildfowl. Combining the Guildhall with a visit to the marsh makes a full day out combining cultural and natural heritage in the distinctive Lincolnshire fenland landscape.
- The admission price is modest compared to similar historic properties managed by English Heritage or the National Trust. Supporting this locally managed historic building through your admission fee directly contributes to its maintenance and interpretation.
Highlights
The Pilgrim Fathers Cells
The original cells beneath the Guildhall where the Scrooby separatists — later known as the Pilgrim Fathers — were imprisoned following their arrest in 1607 are the most emotionally powerful space in the building. William Brewster, William Bradford, and their fellow congregants had been betrayed by the ship's captain they hired to take them to Holland, and were held in these cramped stone cells before being released and tried.
The cells have been largely unchanged since the sixteenth century — the same stone walls, the same low ceiling, the same sense of confinement experienced by men and women who would ultimately found one of the world's first English-speaking American colonies.
For American visitors, standing in these cells is a profound connection to the origins of their own history. The cells are reached by steep stairs from the ground floor.
The Great Hall
The magnificent Great Hall on the first floor of the Guildhall is one of the finest surviving examples of a medieval merchant civic hall in England — a grand room of brick construction with massive ceiling timbers, a raised dais, and the sense of authority appropriate to a space where the affairs of one of medieval England's most prosperous ports were conducted for five centuries.
The hall served as the venue for civic courts, guild meetings, mayoral banquets, and public assemblies from the fifteenth century onwards. Interpretation explains how such halls functioned as centres of civic power, trading regulation, and community identity in medieval English towns.
The hall's survival, essentially intact, in a market town of Boston's modest modern scale is a remarkable historical accident — the building's continued use for civic purposes (it still hosts council functions) has ensured its maintenance.
Boston's Medieval Wool Trade
Comprehensive display on the extraordinary medieval prosperity of Boston — in the fourteenth century the second most important port in England, handling more wool than any other port outside London and serving as the primary English point of departure for trade with the Hanseatic League cities of northern Europe.
Boston's church, St Botolph's — the 'Boston Stump' — whose tower is visible for miles across the flat Lincolnshire fen landscape, was built with the wealth generated by this trade. Display cases contain coins, weights, measuring equipment, ceramic trade goods, and documentary evidence of the merchant community that made Boston rich.
Maps show Boston's position in the medieval European trade network, connecting the Lincolnshire wool-growing hinterland with Bruges, Hamburg, and the Baltic. The story of Boston's subsequent decline from European significance to provincial market town is one of the more dramatic in English economic history.
The Road to the Mayflower
A detailed account of the journey from the 1607 arrest at Boston to the departure of the Mayflower from Southampton in 1620 and the founding of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. The display traces the Scrooby separatists' eventual successful escape to Amsterdam and Leiden in Holland, their twelve years of exile, the decision to seek a new life in America, and the departure of the Mayflower with 102 passengers — only some of whom were the original separatists; others were 'strangers' (non-separatists) seeking economic opportunities in the new world.
Interactive maps trace the Atlantic crossing and the first years of Plymouth Colony.
The display includes reproductions of the Mayflower Compact — the first governance document of the American colonies — and interprets how the Pilgrim Fathers' story became central to American founding mythology.
Collections
Boston Guildhall Museum's collections centre on the historic fabric of the fifteenth-century Guildhall building itself, including the Great Hall, civic rooms, and the cells where the Pilgrim Fathers were imprisoned in 1607. Museum collections cover medieval Boston's prosperity as a wool trading port, the Pilgrim Fathers story and its connections to the founding of Plymouth Colony, local history from medieval to modern times, and civic archives documenting Boston's governance over five centuries.
Objects include civic plate, medieval trade artefacts, coins, documents, and photographs relating to Boston and the surrounding area.
The Pilgrim Fathers Story
The arrest of the Scrooby separatists in 1607, their imprisonment in the Guildhall cells, subsequent escape to Holland, and eventual departure on the Mayflower to found Plymouth Colony in 1620.
📍 Pilgrim Fathers Gallery and cells
Medieval Boston — Wool and Wealth
Boston's extraordinary medieval prosperity as England's second-most important port, the wool trade with Flanders and the Hanseatic League, and the Flemish merchant community.
📍 Medieval History Gallery
Boston Through the Centuries
Local history from Boston's decline from medieval significance through the Tudor, Stuart, Georgian, and Victorian periods to the present day.
📍 Local History Gallery
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.