About

An English Riviera UNESCO Global Geopark Key Site.

The Brixham Heritage Museum is housed in the old Brixham police station, Brixham Heritage Museum provides an intriguing place to visit for all the family with a rich collection of exhibits relating to Brixham's fishing industry including many maritime models and other local archaeological finds relating to the Napoleonic fort at Berry Head. All members of the family will love the reconstructed Victorian parlour, nursery and model of the railway station.

A Visual Guide is now available for Brixham Heritage Museum,  The Guide is a site specific online tool to help people plan and consider their visit to a new place. The Visual Guide shows anything from functional information like entry prices, parking and facilities, but also highlights elements like sound levels, lighting types, spaces and bespoke features that may cause alarm or confusion.

Explore, discover, learn at the Brixham Heritage Museum and come and take a look back in time....

BRIXHAM  IN THE GREAT WAR 1914-1918 Click here to Download our WW1 Leaflet

WORLD WAR TWO

LIFE IN VICTORIAN BRIXHAM Click here to download our Victorian Times Leaflet

NAPOLEONIC BERRY HEAD 1793- 1815 Click here to Download our Berry Head Tunnels Report  200 years ago Britain was fighting the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars with France.  The warships of the Royal Navey found a safe anchorage in the waters of Torbay when the forts and gun battery on Berry Head were built to defend them.

FISHING & ROPEMAKING - Fishing has been at the Heart of Brixham for hundreds of years.   We give young people the chance to try traditional skills like Ropemaking for themselves and learn the history of Generations of Brixham Fishermen.

ARCHEOLOGY & GEOLOGY Click here to Download our Rocks & Fossils Leaflet  During the Variscan Oregeny, 310 to 280 million years ago, Brixham lay at the southern edge of the Continent of Euramerica, and the slow motion of the Earth's tectonic plates made it collide with the southern continent of Gondwana.   This process took a few tens of millions of years and closed the Devonian Sea, creating the supercontinent of Pangaea which made up most of the worlds's landmass.

BRIXHAM BONE CAVES  - Brixham Bone Cavern was the site of pioneering excavations by William Pengelly.  In 1858 he found flint tools alongside the bones of extinct animals in the cave, providing undeniable evidence of the antiquity of prehistoric man.  The scientific excavation and recording system he invented here was later developed into the methods used by archaeologists today.