Alderney Society Museum

The museum collection on display reveals an island community changing over the years to both external and internal pressures. Alderney has a fascinating history starting with extensive Stone, Bronze and Iron Age activity, with object evidence of historically important Roman activity at Longy. The Victorian era brought huge change to Alderney and the landscape it still dominated by Queen Victoria's interest in the island as a defence harbour from the French. Most recently the Second World War had an extreme effect on Alderney when all but a few of the island's inhabitants were evacuated and the island occupied by German forces for the duration of the war. Alderney's evacuees spent the war years in Guernsey, Glasgow and various places the world over. The island landscape was changed dramatically as Hitler used Alderney as part of his Atlantic Wall.

The museum has won prestigious awards since its opening in 1966, most notably the 1999 Gulbenkian award for "most outstanding achievement with limited resources". In 2001 the museum was registered by The Council for Museum, Libraries and Archives and in 2007 achieved full accreditation from the MLA.

The Alderney Society Museum collection now numbers over 18,000 items. The primary source of historical record keeping on the island, the museum acts as an objects store a record centre and the archives of Alderney. We store items donated by the public and historical items requiring storage by the States of Alderney.

Our largest collections include:

World War II German Occupation objects and documents. This collection is unique as Alderney was the only British dominion fully evacuated by civilians and then occupied by German forces for the duration of the war. The island was fortified to be part of Hitler's Atlantic Wall and four labour camps were built. Our collection includes first hand accounts of both Nazi soldiers posted on the island and Russian slave labourers who survived the war and later returned to Alderney to tell their histories. Military objects and documents are stored and on display whilst treasures such as trench art show an aspect of the war rarely discussed.

The return of the islanders in 1946. This collection contains all evacuation documentation and objects such as Government issued furniture, also documents that show insight into Government thinking on the clean up and re-habitation of the island. The task of finding all the residents of the island and creating a home for them on Alderney was tremendous and the collection documents meetings, test runs, and the tentative new methods used to create Alderney again.

The Elizabethan Wreck collection includes superb examples of Elizabethan standardisation of cannons and artefacts brought from the wreck by Alderney divers including armour and leather shoes which survived hundreds of years below the surface.

There are also significant collections of archaeological finds from digs funded by the Alderney Society. Newspapers and cuttings, maps and charts of Alderney and the Channel Islands, Victorian fortifications and harbour building, natural history, artworks and war medals.