Worthing Museum and Art Gallery

This excellent town museum is in an Edwardian hall from 1908, at what used to be Worthing’s library.

The museum’s acclaimed textile and costume collection is one of the largest in the UK, rich with pieces from the Regency and Victorian periods, but also chronicling the dramatic changes to women’s fashion in the 20th century.

There are engrossing displays of local archaeology, including axes from Neolithic flint mines in the downs, the Patching hoard of Roman gold coins and the remnants of an Anglo-Saxon longboat.

One enthralling exhibit is an Ancient Egyptian vase with a Greek inscription unearthed at an Anglo-Saxon cemetery.

The art gallery has painting by Ivon Hitchens, William Holman Hunt and Lucien Pissarro, and sculpture by the Estonian Modernist Dora Gordine.

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