Friends Visit to Ayscoughfee Hall Museum

Saturday 21st September 2024.

Ayscoughfee Hall Museum and Gardens, Churchgate, Spalding PE11 2RA.

Programme

Time	Event	Location
10:30 – 11:00	Arrive Ayscoughfee Hall Museum (AHM) – refreshments available	AHM Garden Room
11:00 – 11:15	Talk – History of Ayscoughfee Hall by Museum Manager Julia Knight	AHM
11:15 – 12:00	Talk – The Centre for Fenland Studies (CFS) and future projects by Michael Gilbert and Sue Hughes	AHM
12:00 – 12:45	Tours around AHM and the CFS	AHM/Gardens/CFS
12:45 – 13:30	LUNCH	AHM Garden Room
13:30 – 13:45	Short walk to Spalding Gentlemen’s Society (SGS)	SGS
13:45 – 15:00	A chance to view items from the Special Collection at SGS with the museum’s curator Ian Hoult	SGS
15:00 – 15:30	Return to AHM and depart	SGS/AHM

Ticket Price £20 (+ EVENTBRITE booking fee) to include coffee, tea and a light lunch

Car parking is available at Ayscoughfee Hall Museum maximum charge £3

Ayscoughfee Hall

Ayscoughfee Hall is a medieval town house on the banks of the River Welland. Built in 1451 by Richard Ailwyn, a wool merchant, it now houses the Ayscoughfee Hall Museum. Richard Ailwyn’s son, Sir Nicholas Ailwyn, a member of the Mercers’ Company, became Lord Mayor of London in 1499. The house is substantially unchanged from that period, and would be recognisable to a visitor from the fifteenth century.

In the seventeenth century, the Hall passed into the Johnson family. The most notable Johnson was the second Maurice Johnson, known as “the Antiquary” (1688–1755), who founded the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society (the second oldest antiquarian society still in existence) in 1710. Maurice Johnson was a good friend of the more famous local antiquarian William Stukeley.

When the last occupants, the family of Charles Foster Bonner, left in 1896, the Hall and Gardens were bought on behalf of the people of Spalding as a memorial of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, and was handed over to the town on 9 August 1902 in celebration of the coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. Now a museum and civic amenity, the house was also used as a primary school for a number of years during the 20th century.

Some of the features of the 5-acre gardens were reputedly laid out by William Sands in the early eighteenth century, and are still visible. The gardens include many fine features, including tall yew hedges, an early ice-house, and a fine ornamental lake. At the end of which sits the Spalding War Memorial (opened in 1922) which was designed by Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens. Other features include a bowling green, tennis courts, aviary and a café. 

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