Corinium Museum

Two private museums came into being from the mid-nineteenth century in Cirencester, and both were the result of the increasing quantity of Roman artifacts coming to light as the town developed. In 1856 the Bathurst family of Cirencester Park built a museum (still extant but no longer a museum) on Tetbury Road to house the two Roman Mosaics (Hunting Dogs and Spring Mosaics) that had recently been found under Dyer Street. Later Wilfred Cripps, a member of a prosperous Cotswold wool merchant family, with his wife Helena, began collecting some of the many Roman items that were being found, and in 1889 built an extension to their substantial home on Thomas Street to house them. The gradual…