Ribchester RomanMuseum

Ribchester Roman Museum stands on Riverside by the banks of the Ribble, on a site first proposed as a museum by Margaret Greenall in the early 1900s to keep local Roman finds from leaving the village. It opened in a single room in 1915 and grew through extensions in the 1960s, 1990 and a Heritage Lottery-funded redevelopment in 2001 that reworked the display cases. When the National Trust gave up the property, a group of local volunteers formed the Ribchester Museum Trust to keep it running as a registered charity, and no trustee draws a wage from it. The collection centres on objects recovered from excavations around the fort and St Wilfrid's churchyard, including Roman helmet masks found nowhere else in Lancashire. A Friends group, launched in 2011, helps with digs, talks and children's activities through the year.