Dartford museum

Dartford Museum is celebrating its centenary this year. It has come a long way in those hundred years. The small collection that was once housed in the Technical Institute in Essex Road in Dartford has grown into one of the most important municipal museums in the county. So much so that the museum is now able to display only a small fraction of what actually possesses.

It is easy to overlook the value of small museums like Dartford’s. National collections such as the Natural History Museum or the British Museum with their stellar collections and spectacular facilities grab all the headlines, but it is local municipal museums that arguably have the greatest appeal as visitor attractions. I took both my children to Dartford Museum for instance when they were young as have the overwhelming majority of Dartford parents over the last hundred years. In fact there are very few people brought up in the borough who haven’t come into contact with it in some way at some point during their lives. Few other institutions in Dartford can boast this kind of reach.

With the face of the borough now changing rapidly, as the pace of development in the Ebbsfleet valley and elsewhere picks up, the need for a local museum service is arguably greater than it has ever been. More and more people are coming to live and work in Dartford, many of whom have no previous link with the borough. A growing proportion of Dartford residents now have no direct personal or family connection therefore with the great cement, paper-making, engineering and pharmaceutical industries that put the borough on the map in nineteenth and twentieth centuries and of course shaped so much of our landscape.

It is vital that we don’t lose sight of this heritage. It is what gives us our distinctive identity and place in the world. If Dartford, or indeed Kent Thameside, is to move forward with confidence, then it needs to have an understanding of where it has come from and take pride in what it has achieved.

In many ways therefore Dartford Museum is now approaching one of the most important and challenging periods in its long and highly distinguished history. Judging by what it has achieved to date I’m sure that it will rise to the challenge admirably.