Portland Museum, Dorset
Coordinates: 50°32′28″N 2°25′48″W / 50.541°N 2.430°W
Portland Museum is a local museum on the Isle of Portland, and part of the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, southern England. It is located at the southern end of the hamlet of Wakeham, close to Church Ope Cove. The museum is a member of the Dorset Museums Association, whilst the museum and its two cottages have been Grade II Listed Buildings since January 1951.
The museum is housed in two 17th-century thatched cottages. The museum is built around four distinct themes; the history of Portland Stone, the Jurassic Coast, shipwrecks around Portland, and famous people linked with Portland. It also shows examples of the island's rich archaeology from the Stone Ages onwards.
The museum received 5,925 visitors in 2003, 5,800 in 2004, 4,220 in 2005, 5,517 in 2006, 4,750 in 2007 and 5,209 in 2009. The museum has limited opening times at Easter, and is open every day during the summer (May–September), before reducing to limited opening times until November, when the museum closes until the next Easter.
The museum was founded by Marie Stopes. She purchased two derelict cottages at the bottom of Wakeham to create a museum for Portland. She handed the museum to islanders as a gift in 1929. Stopes was the Museum's first Honorary Curator and continued a long and active association with it until her death in 1958.
One of the museum's cottages, Avice's Cottage, was the inspiration behind the 1897 novel The Well-Beloved, written by Thomas Hardy, as the home of three generations of "Avices" - the novel's heroines. Hardy was a friend of Stopes.
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