About – Huguenot Museum
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The Huguenot Museum is the first and only museum of Huguenot history in Britain. It tells an important story of Britain’s first refugees, the crafts, trades and skills they brought with them and the impact their contribution has had on the development of our country.
Use this section of the website to discover more about the latest news from the museum and how to get in touch or even hire our space! Here you can also find out about the French Hospital, our sister charity and read a brief history of the Huguenots.
The Museum was opened by Princess Alexandra in Summer 2015 thanks to a £1.3 million grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and is the only Museum in the country dedicated to the story of Huguenot refugees, Protestants who were escaping persecution in France, from the 1500s into the early 1700s. More than 50,000 settled in England, where they made a great impact with their extraordinary skills in crafts such as silk weaving, silversmithing, clockmaking, bookbinding and other occupations such as banking, medicine and the military.  The Museum also celebrates the legacy of the Huguenots through exhibitions of contemporary craft alongside an exciting programme of talks and workshops. It has explored the links between the Huguenot refugees of the past and refugees today, working with organisational partners and groups of refugees on various creative projects.
Over the last10 years the Museum has helped many hundreds of visitors uncover their Huguenot ancestors, and demand for their volunteer-run family history service is as strong as ever as many people turned to family history research over lockdown.
The Huguenot Museum also has a well-used venue hire space which was home to Rochester Film Society, the local volunteer-run organisation showing great cinema every fortnight and partnering with the Museum to show French films four times a year.
The Museum was set up by The French Hospital, an almshouse charity in Rochester founded in London in 1718, by Royal Charter, to support Huguenot refugees. The French Hospital moved to Rochester in the 1950s and continues to operate today. The bulk of the Huguenot Museum’s collection is on loan from The French Hospital.
The Museum is very grateful to the many grant funders, private donors, partners and visitors who have supported the Museum over the last 10 years, and particularly those who have visited the Museum so enthusiastically since reopening.
For further information please contact the Operations Manager, Lara Dix
admin@huguenotmuseum.org
and keep updated via the website and social media.
Huguenot Museum, 95 High Street, Rochester, ME1 1LX
www.huguenotmuseum.org
Twitter:
@huguenotmuseum
Insta:
@huguenot_museum
Facebook:
huguenotmuseum
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