Wimbledon Museum of local lore is probably not the place for which the tourist will go to Wimbledon. But if, attracted by the fame of the area, he gets here, will not be superfluous to go to the Museum.

It is located in a very charming Victorian mansion built in 1858. The Museum is considered public because it belongs to the Wimbledon society is a charitable organization founded in 1903 to protect the local attractions. The society for over a hundred years sends volunteers on weekends Museum open to visitors, conduct free tours, caring for the collection.

The Museum is tiny, but his collection includes about 3,000 items, ranging from the flint arrowhead stone age to digitized maps of the surrounding area. The history of Wimbledon rich: here are found the burial mounds of the bronze age (III Millennium BC), fortified "Cesare camp" of Roman times. As a separate possession of the town mentioned 1328 year – it was under the rule of the bishops of Canterbury, belonged to the crown, passed into private ownership. In 1905 Wimbledon has received the city status. In the First world war there was formed the volunteer artillery brigade. During the Second world war the city was bombed, killing 150 people. There was a transit point for refugees from Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, France.

This story, embodied in manuscripts, photographs, drawings, portraits, newspaper clippings and other artifacts keeps a small Museum. Collected here, for example, about 300 items that help to imagine what life was like in other times, such as clothes, toys, umbrellas, combs, jewelry. Next – what we now called appliances: spinning wheel, candle holders, Cutlery, pots. About 600 of the original documents help to imagine the business side of the old life: the payment document year 1354, acts on the purchase of land by Lord Horatio Nelson, the diaries of a local engineer in the Victorian era of Henry Ford. And then – a collection of newspaper clippings about the social and business life of Wimbledon for the last forty years.

Very curious collection of photographs reflecting the history of Wimbledon for the last 150 years. But the, perhaps, surprising exhibit is "oral history": the memories of old wimbledona recorded and digitized by the Museum staff.