Dean Heritage Centre

The Dean Heritage Centre is located in the valley of Soudley, Gloucestershire, England in the Forest of Dean and exists to record and preserve the social and industrial history of the area and its people. The centre comprises the museum itself, a millpond and waterwheel, forester's cottage with garden and animals, art and craft exhibitions and workshops, and trails around the surrounding woodland. In addition, there are picnic tables, barbecue hearths, an adventure playground, a gift shop selling local produce and the Heritage Kitchen, a restaurant providing home-made food.

The museum itself comprises five galleries telling the history of the Forest of Dean from the earliest geological and fossil records to the present day. They display a wide variety of artefacts from industries such as coal and iron mining, forestry, timber, stone working and clock making that have shaped the history, landscape and culture of the Forest. Among the more noteworthy artefacts in the museum's collection are an 1830s Lightmoor Colliery beam engine, Thomas Sopwith's 1838 geological model of the Dean Forest, and the Voyce collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century longcase clocks.

The Dean Heritage Museum Trust is a registered charity formed in 1979 in response to public concern that the heritage of the Forest of Dean was disappearing. The trust bought a former corn mill Camp Mill and opened a museum there in 1983. The museum underwent a major refurbishment paid for by the Heritage Lottery Fund and completed in 2003.

The museum grounds are home to a reconstructed early-twentieth century Forester’s cottage, which was moved stone by stone from its original location. The cottage is furnished and decorated in authentic Victorian and Edwardian period style. Like many Forest cottages of the time, it is a two-up, two-down, with, on the ground floor, a well-appointed sitting room with a harmonium, Victorian chaise-longue and a collection of period china, and a kitchen with an authentic cast-iron range.

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