About
The Museum of the Broads in Stalham explores the extraordinary history of the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads — a unique wetland landscape of navigable rivers, shallow lakes, and reed-fringed channels that was long believed to be a natural feature but was revealed in the 1960s to be largely man-made, the product of centuries of peat-cutting that flooded to create the distinctive shallow lakes or 'broads' that give the region its name.
The museum is housed in a former Victorian granary on Stalham Staithe beside the River Ant, and its collections tell the story of the human communities who shaped, exploited, and ultimately nearly destroyed this fragile ecosystem.
Traditional Broads crafts and industries are represented in depth: the cutting of reed and sedge for thatching, the netting of eels in the channels that were once so abundant they were a staple food, the catching of birds using traditional decoy ponds, and the construction of the distinctive flat-bottomed Broads craft — from the great wherries that once carried commercial cargoes under their vast black sails to the hire boats that brought the tourist trade that now sustains the economy of the Broads.
The museum holds one of the most significant collections of Norfolk wherry-related artefacts and documents in existence, and has close associations with the Norfolk Wherry Trust, which maintains the last surviving trading wherry Albion.
The natural history of the Broads — its reed beds, water meadows, fens, and rich populations of rare dragonflies, bitterns, marsh harriers, and swallowtail butterflies — is documented alongside the human story, while displays explore the Broads Authority's ongoing work to restore the water quality and ecological health of a landscape that suffered severe decline through agricultural pollution and over-development in the twentieth century.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Combine the museum with a walk along the staithe and riverside to see traditional Broads craft moored at the quay — hireboats, day boats, and traditional wooden craft are usually visible
- The café at the museum makes a pleasant stop even without visiting the galleries — ask about guided boat trips on the River Ant which run on selected days in summer
- Bring binoculars if you have them — the river and adjacent reed beds can produce kingfisher, marsh harrier, and a wide variety of waders and wildfowl, particularly in spring and autumn
- How Hill (5 miles) is the best place to see traditional reed-cutting demonstrations and take guided wildlife boat trips deeper into the fen — book ahead as the small electric boats have limited capacity
- The wherry Albion (Norfolk Wherry Trust) occasionally moors at Stalham Staithe — check the Trust's website to see if she will be present during your visit
- From Stalham you can hire a day boat to explore the River Ant and reach Barton Broad — one of the best ways to understand the museum's story of the Broads landscape
- The museum is open daily in summer so there is no need to plan around specific opening days — but arrive before midday for the best chance of the riverside café tables
Highlights
The Man-Made Broads: A Revelation
For centuries the Broads were assumed to be a natural landscape — a series of shallow lakes formed by glacial or tidal processes in prehistoric times. The truth was far stranger. In the 1960s the geographer Joyce Lambert demonstrated conclusively that the broads are in fact flooded medieval peat diggings: an enormous quarrying operation that extracted peat fuel from the valleys of the Bure, Yare, Ant, and Thurne rivers between roughly the ninth and fourteenth centuries.
When rising sea levels and wetter conditions caused the pits to flood in the late medieval period, the resulting shallow lakes were colonised by reeds and other aquatic vegetation, creating the distinctive Broads landscape. The museum explains this extraordinary scientific discovery and its implications for understanding the human history of the region.
The Norfolk Wherry Collection
The Norfolk wherry was the workhorse of the Broads trading economy for over two centuries: a shallow-draughted cargo boat carrying up to 40 tons of goods under a single enormous black sail, able to navigate the winding waterways where no road cart could reach. Wherries carried coal, grain, timber, and manufactured goods between the farms, mills, and market towns of the Broads until road and rail competition made them uneconomic in the early twentieth century.
The museum holds the most significant collection of wherry-related artefacts and documents in existence: models, sails, rigging equipment, builders' tools, trade records, and photographs documenting these iconic craft and the communities that depended on them.
Reed and Sedge Cutting
The annual harvest of Norfolk reed — Phragmites australis — from the Broads margins was one of the most important industries of the region for centuries and remains alive today. Norfolk reed, cut by hand with a scythe in the cold winter months when the plant has died back, is the finest thatching material in Britain, lasting 60-70 years on a well-made roof compared with 30-40 years for wheat straw.
The museum's reed-cutting displays include original cutting tools, bunching equipment, loading frames, and photographs of the annual harvest that once employed dozens of men across the Broads.
Sedge — cut in summer for use at ridge courses on thatched roofs — is also documented alongside its associated crafts and ecology.
Eel Fishing and Broads Wildlife
Before agricultural pollution devastated Broads ecology in the mid-twentieth century, the waterways teemed with eels, pike, roach, and other freshwater fish that formed a significant part of the diet and economy of Broads communities. Eel trapping using traditional osier-wicker eel traps, known locally as 'eel grigs' or 'hives,' was practised at every staithe and farm quay along the Broads waterways.
The museum documents this fishing tradition through original traps, netting equipment, and catch records, alongside displays on the natural history of the eel — one of the most remarkable creatures in British waters, whose extraordinary life cycle from Sargasso Sea larvae to Broads resident and back remains one of nature's great mysteries.
Collections
The Museum of the Broads holds collections documenting the natural, social, and industrial history of the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads from medieval times to the present day. Core holdings include wherry-related artefacts and documents — the most significant collection of its kind in existence — alongside reed and sedge cutting equipment, eel trapping gear, fishing equipment, boat-building tools, and wildfowling equipment.
The museum holds an extensive photographic archive documenting the Broads landscape, its communities, working crafts, and wildlife from the late Victorian period onwards.
Natural history collections include geological specimens, botanical records, invertebrate collections (particularly Odonata — dragonflies and damselflies), and ornithological records documenting the seasonal birdlife of the Broads. The museum has close association with the Norfolk Wherry Trust, which maintains the last surviving trading wherry Albion, and holds documentary material relating to the Trust's work.
How the Broads Were Made
The extraordinary revelation that the Norfolk Broads are medieval peat diggings, not natural lakes — one of the most significant discoveries in British historical geography of the twentieth century
Working the Water: Industries of the Broads
Reed and sedge cutting, eel fishing, wherry trading, and boat building — the traditional industries that shaped the Broads economy for centuries
Nature and Conservation
The ecology of the Broads, the crisis of twentieth-century pollution, and the ongoing effort to restore one of England's most important wetland habitats
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.