Free museum · 8 Duke Street, Kingston · since 1948
The built and made history of Jamaica, and the store it lives in
412 objects are out in five rooms. The other eleven thousand are upstairs in nine bays and four plan chests, and any one of them can be on a table in front of you in two working days. Entry is free. So is the table.
- In the register
- 11,400Objects accessioned since 1948, counted every March.
- Out on the floors
- 412Across five rooms on three floors. That is about one object in twenty-eight.
- Entry
- FreeNo ticket, no booking, no membership. It has been free since the day it opened.
- Study room
- Wed & Fri10:00 to 15:00. Two tables, six objects on a table, 48 hours' notice.
The register
Search the collection, not a highlights reel
Every record here is an accession: the number it was given, the year it was made, who made it and which parish it came out of. Open a record to see the note the curator wrote. If it says in store, ask for it.
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The first thing written into the register, on the day the museum opened. Two lignum vitae sheaves turning in an iron strop, worn oval by rope. It came off a crane on the wharf at Greenwich, where sugar and logwood went out and everything else came in.
Lignum vitae is dense enough to sink and oily enough to run without grease, which is why the island's wharves used it for two hundred years and why this one still turns.
- Made
- c. 1780
- Maker
- Unrecorded
- Came from
- Greenwich Wharf, Trelawny
- Material
- Lignum vitae, wrought iron
- Size
- 410 × 180 × 140 mm
- Kept
- Store, bay 2
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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Split along the grain with a froe, not sawn, which is why the face sheds water and a sawn shingle does not. The nail holes are square: the nails were cut, so this went up before the wire nail reached the island.
Taken down during a re-roofing in 1951 and given to us with eleven others. The other eleven are in the same box.
- Made
- c. 1760
- Maker
- Unrecorded
- Came from
- Spanish Town, St Catherine
- Material
- Spanish cedar
- Size
- 460 × 130 × 12 mm
- Kept
- Brick, lime and timber
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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One of a set of five that stood in a row over a single flue, each smaller than the last. Cane juice went in at the big end and came out of the small one as sugar. This is the fourth in the row.
Cast in Bristol and shipped as ballast. Two patches are riveted into the base, both done on the estate, and the second is neater than the first.
- Made
- c. 1810
- Maker
- Unrecorded foundry, Bristol
- Came from
- Llandovery, St Ann
- Material
- Copper, iron rivets
- Size
- 1,120 mm across the rim
- Kept
- The machine floor
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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Turned brass with a steel tip, the line hole worn to one side by years of hanging the same way. Found in made ground during drainage work and given to us by the contractor.
Nothing about it says who used it. It is here because every wall in this building was set by one of these.
- Made
- c. 1820
- Maker
- Unrecorded
- Came from
- Port Royal, Kingston
- Material
- Brass, steel
- Size
- 96 mm long
- Kept
- Store, bay 7
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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Coral stone cuts soft out of the ground and hardens in the air, which is how Falmouth got its street fronts up quickly. The tooling marks on the underside are still crisp because they were never weathered.
Salvaged in 1972 when the building behind it came down. We took the head and the two jambs; only the head is out on the floor.
- Made
- c. 1800
- Maker
- Unrecorded
- Came from
- Falmouth, Trelawny
- Material
- Coral stone
- Size
- 1,480 × 260 × 210 mm
- Kept
- Brick, lime and timber
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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Six feet of cast rail in a repeating tree-fern pattern, with the foundry mark cast into the end post where the paint never reached. Vale Royal ran three patterns; this is the one that sold.
You can still find it on verandahs from Cross Roads to Above Rocks. Ours came off a house that was demolished in 1974 and it is on the floor so people can put a name to what they walk past.
- Made
- c. 1878
- Maker
- Vale Royal Foundry, Kingston
- Came from
- Vineyard Town, Kingston
- Material
- Cast iron, lead paint
- Size
- 1,830 × 760 mm
- Kept
- Ironwork and hand tools
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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A croze cuts the groove at each end of a barrel that the head drops into. Get it wrong and the barrel leaks, which on a rum estate is the whole argument.
Beech stock, steel cutter, the owner's initials burnt into the stock twice in two different places. Came to us from Frome with a set of six other cooper's tools.
- Made
- c. 1860
- Maker
- Unrecorded, Westmoreland
- Came from
- Frome, Westmoreland
- Material
- Beech, steel
- Size
- 340 mm long
- Kept
- Store, bay 4
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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An Albion, cast in London and shipped out in pieces. One pull of the bar prints one sheet, so everything printed on it was printed one sheet at a time: handbills, shipping notices, funeral programmes.
It worked on Harbour Street from 1867 until the shop closed. The platen still takes ink and we run it twice a year, which is the only reason it is out on the floor rather than in the store.
- Made
- 1867
- Maker
- Hopkinson & Cope, London
- Came from
- Harbour Street, Kingston
- Material
- Cast iron, steel, brass
- Size
- 1,900 mm tall
- Kept
- Print, paper and drawings
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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Thrown, not coiled, and fired low so it stays porous. The base is black from the fire and the inside is worn smooth in one arc where a spoon went round it for years.
The potter is not recorded. The parish is, because the clay is, and St Elizabeth clay fires to this particular red.
- Made
- c. 1880
- Maker
- Unrecorded potter, St Elizabeth
- Came from
- Nain, St Elizabeth
- Material
- Earthenware
- Size
- 290 mm across
- Kept
- Ironwork and hand tools
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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Cast locally to a pattern that was sold everywhere, with brass finials on the four posts and a mosquito-net frame that bolts on above. Three of the four finials are original.
It came to us dismantled and it stays dismantled in bay 1, which is the only way six feet of bedstead fits on a shelf. We lay it out on the table if you ask.
- Made
- c. 1890
- Maker
- Vale Royal Foundry, Kingston
- Came from
- Above Rocks, St Andrew
- Material
- Cast iron, brass
- Size
- 1,930 × 1,370 mm assembled
- Kept
- Store, bay 1
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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A hundred links, sixty-six feet, ten chains to the furlong. Every old title deed on this island describes land in these units, so a chain like this one drew most of the lines that are still argued over.
Stamped by the maker at the handle. Stretched in three places, which is what you would expect and which is why the Lands Department retired it.
- Made
- c. 1855
- Maker
- Chesterman, Sheffield
- Came from
- Lands Department, Kingston
- Material
- Steel, brass tags
- Size
- 20,100 mm extended
- Kept
- Store, bay 7
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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Four boards, two ledges, no frame. Public Works built these by the hundred in the weeks after January 1907 and people lived behind them on North Street for longer than anyone intended.
The hinges were cut off before it reached us. The stencilled number on the back is the hut number, and it is the only record that hut existed.
- Made
- 1907
- Maker
- Public Works Department, Kingston
- Came from
- North Street, Kingston
- Material
- Pitch pine
- Size
- 1,840 × 760 × 30 mm
- Kept
- Brick, lime and timber
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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A six-inch cube cast from the same mix as the slab, kept twenty-eight days and then crushed to see whether the slab would hold. This one held, and the crack pattern across the face is the record of the test.
The date and the mix are pencilled on one face in a hand nobody has identified. It came off a shelf in the Public Works store when that store was cleared.
- Made
- 1932
- Maker
- Public Works Department, Kingston
- Came from
- Duke Street, Kingston
- Material
- Concrete
- Size
- 152 mm cube
- Kept
- Store, bay 9
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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A cotta is a ring of twisted cloth that sits on the head and takes the weight of what is carried on it. This one is made from a flour sack and a strip of a dress, wound and stitched tight.
The woman who made it carried bananas from the field to Boundbrook wharf. Her granddaughter brought it in and we wrote the name down: it is on the record and on the label.
- Made
- c. 1925
- Maker
- Made by the wearer, Portland
- Came from
- Boundbrook Wharf, Portland
- Material
- Cotton cloth
- Size
- 220 mm across
- Kept
- Ironwork and hand tools
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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Raised from sheet copper over a stake and brazed at one seam, which you can find by running a finger inside. The swan neck was cut off before it came to us.
Copper is not decoration here: it takes the sulphur out of the spirit as it passes. Worthy Park replaced it and kept it in a shed for sixty years before it reached the register.
- Made
- c. 1910
- Maker
- Unrecorded coppersmith, Kingston
- Came from
- Worthy Park, St Catherine
- Material
- Copper, brazed
- Size
- 840 mm across the base
- Kept
- The machine floor
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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Enamel fired onto steel, which is why the colour is as strong as the day it went up and why the two chips have rusted through. Made in Birmingham to an order sent from Kingston.
Signs like this hung on every corner shop on the island. Almost none were kept, because a sign is not a thing anyone thinks to keep.
- Made
- c. 1938
- Maker
- Patent Enamel Co., Birmingham
- Came from
- Cross Roads, St Andrew
- Material
- Vitreous enamel on steel
- Size
- 910 × 610 mm
- Kept
- Store, bay 3
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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Eleven sheets covering the 1912 repairs: two elevations, five sections and four details of the plasterwork. Ink and pencil on linen, which survives heat and damp far better than paper and is why we still have them.
The pencil notes in the margins are corrections made on site. They contradict the ink in three places, and the building followed the pencil.
Flat in plan chest 2. We will bring them out onto the study-room table, and we can copy a sheet for you.
- Made
- 1912
- Maker
- Rudolph Henriques, architect, Kingston
- Came from
- Kingston Corporation
- Material
- Ink and pencil on linen
- Size
- Eleven sheets, largest 1,050 × 740 mm
- Kept
- Store, plan chest 2
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Extruded aluminium, glass blades, one crank. It arrived in the 1950s and within twenty years it had replaced the timber sash almost everywhere, because it lets the breeze through and does not rot.
This one came out of a Mona house in 1964 with the crank still working. The blades are the original glass, which is thicker than what is sold now.
- Made
- 1957
- Maker
- Jamaica Aluminium, Kingston
- Came from
- Mona, St Andrew
- Material
- Aluminium, glass
- Size
- 1,220 × 610 mm
- Kept
- Concrete and the louvre
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The trowel blade is worn back by about fifteen millimetres on the leading edge, which is a decade of work. The board is one piece of cedar with a handle let into the underside.
Given by the family of the man who used them on the Trench Town houses. We have his name and we do not have a photograph of him, which is the usual way round.
- Made
- c. 1950
- Maker
- Unrecorded
- Came from
- Trench Town, Kingston
- Material
- Steel, cedar
- Size
- Trowel 280 mm, board 340 mm square
- Kept
- Store, bay 4
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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A hand mould: shovel the mix in, tamp it, lift the box off, leave the block to cure on the ground. One man could make two hundred a day and the whole of Rockfort and half of St Andrew went up out of moulds like this.
The corners are square and the faces are still true, which is unusual. Most were used until they bowed.
- Made
- c. 1954
- Maker
- Caribbean Cement, Rockfort
- Came from
- Rockfort, Kingston
- Material
- Mild steel
- Size
- 460 × 230 × 200 mm
- Kept
- Concrete and the louvre
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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A steel chassis, four output valves, a transformer wound to order, and point-to-point wiring done by hand with no board. Built to be louder than anything imported, which is what it was for.
Two resistors have been changed and one of them is not the right value. We left both in place: the repairs are part of what the object records.
- Made
- c. 1959
- Maker
- Hedley Jones, Kingston
- Came from
- Beeston Street, Kingston
- Material
- Steel, copper, glass valves
- Size
- 480 × 300 × 220 mm
- Kept
- The machine floor
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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Printed on one side only, in three colours, on cotton light enough to lift in wind. Nine yards of it, in one length, with the string still threaded through the top hem.
It hung across Duke Street. The fold lines have been in the same places for sixty years, which is why it lives flat in a box and comes out for a table rather than a wall.
- Made
- 1962
- Maker
- Unrecorded printer, Kingston
- Came from
- Duke Street, Kingston
- Material
- Printed cotton
- Size
- 8,230 × 300 mm
- Kept
- Store, bay 6
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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A sheet of corrugated zinc cut down with a chisel, not shears, and nailed to two rails with roofing nails and their washers. The cut edge has been folded over twice so nobody cuts a hand on it.
It is in the register because the zinc fence is the most common piece of built fabric on this island and there was no example of one here.
- Made
- c. 1985
- Maker
- Unrecorded
- Came from
- Tivoli Gardens, Kingston
- Material
- Galvanised steel, timber
- Size
- 1,830 × 810 mm
- Kept
- Store, bay 5
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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Cut to the window it covered, with the window's dimensions written on the back in marker and a wedge nailed on where the reveal was out of square. It went up before Gilbert and it stayed up for eleven months.
The householder made it, kept it, and brought it in sixteen years later. Objects like this are usually burnt.
- Made
- 1988
- Maker
- Made by the householder, Portland
- Came from
- Manchioneal, Portland
- Material
- Plywood, pine batten
- Size
- 1,220 × 910 × 30 mm
- Kept
- Store, bay 5
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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A pierced block that makes a wall you can see through and air can move through. Cast at Rockfort in four patterns; the star sold best and is on walls from Harbour View to Montego Bay.
Ours came out of a 1972 wall taken down in 2016. It is on the floor at eye height so the pattern can be read from both sides, which is the only way to read it.
- Made
- c. 1972
- Maker
- Caribbean Cement, Rockfort
- Came from
- Harbour View, St Andrew
- Material
- Concrete
- Size
- 300 × 300 × 100 mm
- Kept
- Concrete and the louvre
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
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A cement tile, pigment pressed into the top six millimetres, from the floor you walk on when you come in. Twelve were lifted when the hall was re-laid and eleven went back down.
The twelfth is in a case by the door, next to the gap it came out of. It is the only object here that is also part of the building.
- Made
- c. 1965
- Maker
- Unrecorded, Kingston
- Came from
- This building
- Material
- Pigmented cement
- Size
- 200 mm square
- Kept
- Entrance hall
No photograph on the record yet. We photograph a bay at a time and this one has not come round. Ask and we will take one.
Nothing typed up matches that. Only part of the register is on this site, so the books may still have it. Describe it on the request form and we will look.
Anything marked in store can be on a table in the study room in two working days.
0 objects on your request
Ask for a tableOn the floors
Five rooms, in the order the island was built
Ground floor
Brick, lime and timber
How the island was built before cement: coral stone, lime mortar, cedar and pitch pine.
84 objects outOpen the room
Ground floor
Ironwork and hand tools
Verandah rails, bedsteads and gates from the Kingston foundries, and the tools that shaped everything else.
97 objects outOpen the room
First floor
Concrete and the louvre
The mid-century island: hollow block, pierced screens, aluminium louvres and reinforced slabs.
68 objects outOpen the room
First floor
Print, paper and drawings
The Albion press, the drawings on linen, and the paper record of what got built.
73 objects outOpen the room
Second floor
The machine floor
Sugar-works gearing, a still head, an amplifier chassis: the things that were made to make other things.
90 objects outOpen the room
The study room
Anything in store can be seen
This is the part most people do not know about, so we will spell it out. The store is not a place where things go to be forgotten. It is the museum. The five rooms downstairs are a selection from it, and everything else is two floors up in a bay with a number.
Pick objects out of the register, or describe what you are looking for if it has not been typed up yet. Give us 48 hours. We check the condition, carry it down, and lay it out on one of the two tables with foam supports and weights.
No fee, no letter of introduction, no need to be attached to a university. A householder with a hinge gets the same table as a professor.
Who uses it
Researchers, sixth formers, and people with a thing in a bag
I asked for eleven sheets of drawings on the Tuesday and they were flat on the table on the Friday, with the plan chest reference written on a slip. No fee, no letter of introduction, no fuss.
I came in for a project on the 1907 earthquake and left with photographs of a door from one of the relief huts. Nobody asked me who I was.
They took my father's hurricane shutter, wrote his name on the record, and showed me where it would be kept. I did not expect a museum to want a piece of plywood.
Open
- Tuesday to Saturday
- 10:00 to 17:00
- Sunday
- 12:00 to 16:00
- Monday
- Closed
Call the desk
Bring an object in on any open day and we will tell you what we think it is.