Museums

This chest would have been used to store legal documents including records of births, marriages and deaths in the parish of West Haddon in Northamptonshire.

It was an important community record and would have been kept in the church. Dating from 1400, it has been changed over time to ensure that it was fit for use.

In the 1550s, during the Elizabethan reforms of the church, it was mandated in England, Wales, and Ireland that all parish churches should acquire a chest with a hole in the top for alms and three locks. Each church set its own budget and hired its own craftsmen, with the result that every strongbox is unique. The three locks were to ensure that the strongbox was never opened by only one person. The clergyman had the key to one lock, the church warden had the key to another and a trusted member of the community had the third. For the chest to be opened all three had to be present with their keys. A number of decades later the requirement was added that the strongbox had to be reinforced with strips of metal.

A museum for Abington

Lady Wantage donated Abington Manor to the Borough of Northampton along with the parkland. With the donation the building was changed to a museum, the north wing pulled down and the west wing rebuilt. In 1899, Abington Park Museum was opened in the centre of the park.