About
Chard Museum occupies Godworthy House, a thatched building of considerable age on the town's long High Street, together with adjoining ranges and outbuildings that give it far more space than its frontage suggests. It is a volunteer-run local museum, and like the best of them it turns out to hold two or three collections of genuinely national significance among the parish registers and farm implements — because Chard, a modest Somerset market town, produced an improbable number of consequential people.
The first is John Stringfellow, a lace-machine maker who worked in the town and who, with William Samuel Henson, spent the 1840s attempting to build a flying machine. Their patented Aerial Steam Carriage was never constructed at full size, but in 1848 Stringfellow flew a steam-powered model monoplane indoors at Chard, an event widely regarded as the first sustained powered flight by a heavier-than-air machine anywhere. The museum's Stringfellow collection is the centrepiece of the building and the reason it draws visitors from well outside Somerset.
The second is James Gillingham, a Chard bootmaker who in the 1860s was called on to help a man mutilated by an exploding cannon and went on to design and manufacture artificial limbs, building a business with an international clientele and photographing his patients in a way that has left an extraordinary visual record. The museum holds his limbs, tools, photographs and correspondence — a collection of real importance to the history of prosthetics and of disability, and an unexpectedly moving thing to encounter in a small-town museum.
Around these sit the town's other stories: machine-made lace, which was Chard's principal industry after the trade spread west from Nottingham; the short-lived Chard Canal with its inclined planes; the curious geographical accident by which water leaving the town flows to two different seas; and Margaret Bondfield, born here in 1873, who became the first woman to sit in a British Cabinet. There is also a blacksmith's forge, agricultural and domestic collections and a substantial local archive.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Opening is mornings only — Wednesday to Friday until 13:30 and Saturday until 13:00 — so plan for a morning visit.
- From November to March the museum opens by arrangement rather than for drop-in visits; use the Book a Visit form on its website.
- Accompanied under-16s are admitted free, and an annual membership costs little more than two visits.
- Allow proper time for the Gillingham limb collection; it is easy to walk past and is one of the most significant things in the building.
- Park at the Minnows car park on Bath Street, about five hundred metres away, as on-site parking is very limited.
- A stair lift serves the first floor, but some parts of the listed building have steps and narrow passages — ring ahead if access is a concern.
- The Stringfellow material rewards a slow look: the 1848 flight is a genuine claim to a world first, made in this town.
- Combine the visit with Forde Abbey, about eight kilometres away, for a full day in south Somerset.
Highlights
John Stringfellow and the First Powered Flight
John Stringfellow made lace machinery in Chard and spent the 1840s, with his collaborator William Samuel Henson, trying to build a machine that would fly under its own power. Their Aerial Steam Carriage was patented and widely publicised but never built full size; in 1848, however, Stringfellow flew a small steam-powered model monoplane indoors in the town, and that flight is widely cited as the first sustained powered flight by a heavier-than-air craft anywhere in the world.
The museum's Stringfellow displays cover the engines, the models, the patent and the extraordinary ambition behind them.
The Gillingham Artificial Limb Collection
James Gillingham was a Chard bootmaker who in the 1860s was asked to help a man whose arm had been destroyed by an exploding cannon, and who went on to design, make and sell artificial limbs to an international clientele. The museum holds his limbs, his lasts and tools, his correspondence and, most remarkably, his photographs of the people who wore his work — a body of images that has become an important source for the history of prosthetics and of disability.
It is a collection of national importance sitting in a small-town museum, and it deserves unhurried attention.
Chard Lace
The machine-lace industry spread west from Nottingham in the early nineteenth century, and Chard became one of its principal Somerset centres, with factories employing large numbers of townspeople and drawing in the mechanical skills that Stringfellow himself possessed. Displays cover the machinery, the patterns, the working conditions and the trade's long decline, and make the connection that the museum is careful to draw: it was lace engineering, and the precision it demanded, that gave a Somerset market town the capability to attempt a flying machine at all.
Margaret Bondfield
Margaret Bondfield was born in Chard in 1873, went into shop work as a girl, became a trade union organiser and Labour MP, and in 1929 was appointed Minister of Labour — the first woman to hold a British Cabinet post and to be sworn of the Privy Council. Her career ran through the shop assistants' union, the Trades Union Congress, which she chaired, and two Labour governments.
The museum's material sets a nationally significant political life against the small-town circumstances it began in, which is the most useful thing a local museum can do with such a figure.
Collections
Chard Museum, in Godworthy House on the High Street, combines local social history with two collections of national significance. The first documents John Stringfellow, a Chard lace-machine maker who with William Samuel Henson patented the Aerial Steam Carriage in the 1840s and in 1848 flew a steam-powered model monoplane in the town — widely regarded as the first sustained powered flight by a heavier-than-air machine.
The second is the James Gillingham collection of artificial limbs, tools, correspondence and patient photographs, assembled by a Chard bootmaker who became a prosthetics manufacturer with an international clientele from the 1860s.
Around these sit displays on the town's machine-lace industry, the Chard Canal and its inclined planes, Margaret Bondfield — born here in 1873 and the first woman in a British Cabinet — and the town's position on a watershed draining to two seas, together with a blacksmith's forge, agricultural, trade and domestic collections and a local archive.
Stringfellow and Flight
The Aerial Steam Carriage, Stringfellow's steam engines and models, and the 1848 flight at Chard.
The Gillingham Collection
James Gillingham's artificial limbs, tools, correspondence and photographs of his patients.
Lace and Industry
Machine-lace manufacture in Chard, the Chard Canal and the town's working trades.
Chard People
Local social history including Margaret Bondfield, the town's shops, schools and institutions.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.