About
The University of Nottingham Museum is a free archaeology museum on the University Park campus, part of the Lakeside Arts complex and sitting between the Department of Music and the Djanogly Art Gallery in the parkland setting of Highfields. It holds and displays archaeological material from Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire, covering a span of more than 250,000 years from the earliest stone tools found in the region to the medieval period and beyond.
The collection is a working university one, built up through excavation, fieldwork, donation and teaching over many decades, and its regional focus is deliberate. Rather than attempting a survey of world archaeology, the museum concentrates on the East Midlands and on what the material record says about ordinary life there: prehistoric flint and stone tools, Bronze and Iron Age metalwork, Roman pottery, glass, coins and small finds, Anglo-Saxon and Viking-period objects reflecting a region that lay within the Danelaw, and medieval ceramics, coins and everyday domestic items.
Much of the displayed material is precisely the sort of thing that rarely reaches national museums — the eating and drinking vessels, tools, dress fittings, gaming pieces and personal ornaments that constitute the archaeological residue of ordinary households. That emphasis gives the museum a distinctive character: it is less concerned with treasure than with what excavation actually recovers in quantity, and it is well suited to explaining how archaeologists reason from fragmentary and unglamorous evidence.
Because the museum sits within Lakeside Arts, a visit can readily be combined with the Djanogly Gallery's exhibition programme, the Weston Gallery's manuscript and archive displays, the theatre and recital hall, and the parkland and lake of Highfields Park immediately outside. The museum is free, requires no booking, and opens Thursday to Sunday afternoons, an unusual pattern that deliberately includes both weekend days. The daily window is a short one, from noon until four, and catches visitors out rather more often than the four-day pattern does, so it is worth checking before setting out.
Categories:
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- The museum opens Thursday to Sunday, noon to 4pm only — the short daily window catches visitors out more often than the four-day pattern does.
- Admission is free and no booking is needed.
- Combine the visit with the Djanogly Gallery and Weston Gallery in the same complex; between them they usually offer far more than the archaeology alone.
- Highfields Park, with its lake and gardens, is immediately outside and makes the trip worthwhile even for non-specialists.
- Visit during the annual Festival of Archaeology in July if you can, when Lakeside Arts runs additional activities and events.
- Beeston station is the nearer of the two railway options at about thirty minutes' walk; buses from Nottingham city centre stop close to Lakeside.
- Parking on campus is paid; check the Lakeside Arts website for current visitor parking arrangements.
- The displays reward slow reading — the interest here is in how archaeologists reason from ordinary objects, not in spectacular individual finds.
Highlights
250,000 Years of the East Midlands
The museum's displays span an extraordinary chronological range, from the earliest stone tools recovered in the region through to the medieval period.
Beginning with Palaeolithic handaxes and other early lithics, the sequence moves through Mesolithic and Neolithic material, Bronze and Iron Age metalwork, Roman occupation, the Anglo-Saxon and Viking centuries and into the Middle Ages. Presenting that span in a single modest gallery requires considerable selectivity, and the museum uses it to make a point about continuity of settlement in a region whose archaeology is often overshadowed by more famous areas elsewhere in Britain.
Roman Pottery, Coins and Small Finds
The Roman collections are among the museum's strongest, drawing on excavation across Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and the surrounding counties — a region with substantial Roman activity along the Fosse Way and Ermine Street and around settlements including Lincoln. Pottery in quantity, coins, glass, brooches, dress fittings and domestic ironwork make up the bulk of the material.
Rather than presenting these as isolated treasures, the displays use them to explain how archaeologists date sites, identify trade connections and reconstruct household economies from what are, individually, unremarkable objects.
The Archaeology of Everyday Life
The museum's guiding emphasis is on ordinary material rather than spectacular finds: eating and drinking vessels, cooking pots, querns, tools, spindle whorls, gaming pieces, dress pins and personal ornaments.
This is what excavation actually produces in quantity, and it constitutes the evidence from which most understanding of past daily life is built. The approach makes the museum genuinely useful for anyone wanting to understand archaeological reasoning, since it foregrounds the fragmentary and the commonplace over the exceptional objects that dominate national collections.
Prehistoric Stone Tools
The prehistoric collections include flint and stone tools spanning the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic, recovered from river gravels, fieldwalking and excavation across the East Midlands. Handaxes, blades, scrapers, arrowheads and polished axes illustrate both technological change over an immense timespan and the raw materials available regionally.
The displays explain how such tools are made and how their forms are used to date and interpret sites, which for many visitors is the first encounter with the practical logic of lithic analysis rather than simply a case of old stones.
Collections
The University of Nottingham Museum holds archaeological collections from Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire, spanning more than 250,000 years from the earliest stone tools recovered in the region to the medieval period. Holdings include Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic lithics; Bronze and Iron Age metalwork; substantial Roman collections of pottery, coins, glass, brooches and domestic ironwork; Anglo-Saxon and Viking-period material reflecting the region's place within the Danelaw and the Five Boroughs; and medieval ceramics, coins, tiles and household objects.
The collection was assembled through excavation, fieldwork, donation and teaching over many decades, and its emphasis falls on the ordinary domestic material — vessels, tools, dress fittings, gaming pieces and personal ornaments — from which everyday life in the past is reconstructed.
Archaeology of the East Midlands
A chronological display from the earliest stone tools through Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking and medieval material.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.