About
Harlow Museum occupies the surviving stable block of Mark Hall, a manor house that stood on this site until the middle of the twentieth century, and the two acres of walled gardens that once served it. The combination is unusual and gives the museum a double character: galleries covering more than a thousand years of local history on one side of the wall, and three restored period gardens on the other, all of it free to enter and set in a quiet corner of a town otherwise best known as a post-war experiment in planning.
The archaeology comes first chronologically and is the collection's strongest suit. Iron Age and Romano-British material from the district includes finds from the temple site at Holbrooks beside the River Stort, one of the more significant Romano-British religious sites in the eastern counties, which produced a very large assemblage of coins along with votive objects and structural evidence of a temple precinct in use across several centuries. Displays set it against the pattern of settlement in the Stort valley before Harlow existed as a name.
A second strength is post-medieval pottery. Harlow was a centre of the seventeenth-century slipware industry, and vessels made in the local kilns — decorated with trailed white slip on a red body, often dated and inscribed — travelled to London in quantity and turn up on archaeological sites across the south-east. The museum holds a substantial collection of this ware and explains the industry that produced it, a reminder that this stretch of Essex was manufacturing for the capital long before the New Town arrived.
That New Town is the third strand. Harlow was designated in 1947 and laid out to Frederick Gibberd's master plan, and the museum covers its planning, building and social history. It also holds an extensive collection of historic bicycles, inherited from the Mark Hall Cycle Museum that formerly occupied the same buildings, running from boneshakers and penny-farthings through to twentieth-century machines. Outside, the walled gardens — a fruit garden, a Mediterranean garden and a design garden — repay as much time as the galleries.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- The museum opens on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays only, so check the day before setting out.
- Last entry is at 15:00, half an hour before closing.
- Both museum and gardens are free, with a free car park — an unusually cheap day out for a family.
- Allow time for the walled gardens as well as the galleries; between them they need an hour and a half.
- Explorer kits are available for children at the front desk.
- The gardens are at their best from late spring to early autumn; in winter the galleries are the main draw.
- Combine the visit with the Gibberd Gallery or the Gibberd Garden for a fuller picture of Harlow's post-war design history.
- Some garden paths are shingle, which is worth knowing if you are pushing a wheelchair or a buggy.
Highlights
The Harlow Roman Temple
At Holbrooks, on a low hill above the River Stort, stood a Romano-British temple that was in use for the better part of four centuries and produced one of the largest coin assemblages recovered from any religious site in eastern England, along with votive objects, brooches and structural evidence of a walled precinct.
Excavation showed activity on the hill beginning in the Iron Age, before the conquest, which suggests continuity of a sacred site across the Roman arrival rather than a wholly new foundation. The museum's displays interpret the excavations and the finds, and make the case for the temple's regional importance.
Harlow Slipware
In the seventeenth century the potteries around Harlow produced large quantities of red earthenware decorated with trailed white slip, frequently inscribed with names, dates, mottoes and royal initials, and sold into London in such volume that archaeologists working in the capital habitually call the type Metropolitan ware.
The museum's collection is a substantial one, and the pieces are among the most immediately appealing objects in the building: cheerful, dated, and often carrying the words of the people who bought them.
Interpretation covers the kiln sites, the trade route into London and the industry's eventual decline.
The Cycle Collection
The museum inherited an extensive collection of historic bicycles from the Mark Hall Cycle Museum, which occupied the same stable buildings before the collections were combined.
It runs from the bone-shaking wooden-wheeled machines of the 1860s through the high-wheeled ordinary — the penny-farthing — to safety bicycles, tricycles and twentieth-century roadsters, racers and children's machines. Taken in sequence the collection shows the invention of the modern bicycle happening over about thirty years, and explains why the safety bicycle, once it arrived, spread so quickly and mattered so much socially.
The Three Walled Gardens
Two acres of walled garden survive from the Mark Hall estate, restored as three distinct spaces: a fruit garden with trained trees against the brickwork, a Mediterranean garden exploiting the warmth that a south-facing wall retains, and a design garden used for more contemporary planting. Walled kitchen gardens were a working part of every substantial country house and almost all of them have been lost, so a surviving example open to the public without charge is worth the visit on its own.
Benches, lawns and picnic space make it a place to linger rather than pass through.
Collections
Harlow Museum's collections cover the district from prehistory to the present. The archaeological holdings are led by material from the Romano-British temple at Holbrooks beside the River Stort — a site with pre-conquest Iron Age origins that produced an exceptionally large coin assemblage — supported by prehistoric flint and metalwork and by medieval material from Old Harlow, Latton and the surrounding parishes.
A substantial collection of seventeenth-century Harlow slipware represents the local pottery industry whose trailed-slip red earthenware reached London in quantity and is known to archaeologists there as Metropolitan ware.
The museum also holds an extensive collection of historic bicycles inherited from the former Mark Hall Cycle Museum, running from 1860s boneshakers to twentieth-century machines, and displays on the designation and building of Harlow New Town from 1947 to Frederick Gibberd's master plan.
Outside the galleries, two acres of restored walled garden survive from the Mark Hall estate.
Roman Harlow
The temple site at Holbrooks, its coin assemblage and votive material, and the Iron Age activity that preceded it.
Harlow Pottery
Seventeenth-century Harlow slipware, the kiln sites that produced it and its trade into London.
The Cycle Collection
Historic bicycles from the 1860s onwards, formerly the Mark Hall Cycle Museum.
Harlow New Town
The 1947 designation, Frederick Gibberd's master plan and the social history of the town's first decades.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.