Fitzwilliam Museum

History of the Fitzwilliam Museum

General information about the Fitzwilliam Museum can be found on Wikipedia.

Fitzwilliam Museum circa 1840

Lower Gallery where William Pyle worked as a plasterer in the 1840s

Fitzwilliam Museum circa 1908

The museum’s own web site can been reached on this link:

http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/

The following picture from March 1904 shows King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra leaving the Fitzwilliam Museum.

King Edward VII & Queen leaving museum

Trumpington Street, 26 December 1906 (photo H A Chapman)

Fitzwilliam Museum (MoC)

1907

CDN 20.6.1907: A University Report: The Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum should be present at three hours a day when it was open, keeping a diary recording his hours. His salary should be decreased from £300 to £250 and the money used to pay for anther member of staff.

Fitzwilliam Museum c.1917

Information about the decorative lions at the museum can be found here:

http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/history-stories/lions-fitzwilliam-museum/

Susan Gaisford was born in Cambridge in 1943 and lived at 35 Trumpington Street. She reminisced about her childhood in 2020 and wrote this:

I can tell you that the lions who lived at the Fitzwilliam Museum didn’t go to drink in the conduits.  They went at midnight to the Cam.  I was told that if I saw them at midnight, they couldn’t go.  As a child, you can imagine, I couldn’t resist this, so went to a front window overlooking the Fitzwilliam, and they were still there.  So – the story was real.  I always hoped that the lions saw the light go off and were able to go to the river.

Fitzwilliam Museum (courtesy C Tongue)

Fitzwilliam Museum (RGL2025)