Do you remember the old Willis Museum in New Street (now New Road)? The museum and the County Library shared the building, which began as the Mechanics Institute in about 1841, founded by wealthy gentlemen – we see Wyndham Portal and Edward Lefroy among the founders.

Mechanics’ Institutes were founded to give lectures and scientific demonstrations to working men.

George Willis, born 1877 was a member of the Institute, which had a modest library and a billiard room. By 1927, the Institute was in trouble financially and the decision was taken to offer it to the council as a free library and museum. The library opened on the ground floor; the upper floor remained empty, but the idea of a museum for the town was taking shape.

George Willis’s interest in collecting fossils and other finds began in his boyhood. He was one of those who benefitted from an Aldworth scholarship to enable his education at Queen Mary’s Grammar School and before that was a pupil at the new Board School at Fairfields.

His family had a watchmakers and jewellers shop in Wote Street.

Years later, when George Willis was chairman of the Aldworth charity which had enabled his education, it was to him that young scholarship holders had to take their school reports. My mother, Hazel Sweetman née Grover, recalled his kindly interest. Another scholar, John Arlott, remembered George Willis struggling to say something positive about his reports and behaviour in school.

Willis was elected to the council and later became mayor. He and his friend John Ellaway walked the fields around the town, finding flints and pottery. In due course, these men would offer their own collections to a museum if one were opened, where the town’s ancient charters could also be exhibited. The aim of the museum would be ‘to explain Basingstoke’.

Councillor Mrs Edith Weston, the town’s first woman mayor, was also a great advocate for the museum along with another councillor, Thomas Allnutt.

When the Willis Museum opened in January 1931, George Willis credited Thomas Allnutt, who had been mayor in 1916-1919, with kick-starting museum funding with an offer of £500 to the museum fund if the council would match it. The council offered £1000, and George Willis had the large room above the library in New Street to install it.    

In 1944 the library and museum was transferred to Hampshire County Council with George Willis continuing as honorary curator. The museum held an important collection of clocks and watches - its collection significantly important nationally.

Sadly, some of these items were stolen from the museum after it had relocated to the old town hall in Market Place.

George Willis was made a Freeman of the Borough in 1954.

With town development, the library moved to its much larger premises in the new town centre and the museum found a new home in the former town hall.

Before the move, entering from New Street, the library was on the ground floor to your right. Heading up the stairs you became face to face with an engraving of William Frederick Yeames’ painting called ‘When Did You Last See your Father?’ Although painted in 1878, it recalls a Civil War scene where the child of a Royalist household is being questioned by Parliamentary soldiers. It was a haunting image and maybe here because of the Civil War connection with nearby Basing House.

No one who was a child at the time could forget the Basingstoke spider, encased in Perspex and terrifyingly large and hairy. Apparently, this had been found in a shipment of bananas and was without doubt a tarantula. Others said that it was a species unique to Basingstoke.  

After the museum closed it ended up with the County Museum collection, where it fell to pieces. Such a shame. A motorcycle and a Penny-farthing bicycle as well as a case with small items, such as watch chain seals and jewellery. The museum also contained stuffed fish, a stuffed cockerel with an egg which it had laid. How did that work? Under green baize covers which could be pushed back, large glass cases contained the many documents relating to the town's history. Royal charters and other documents now safely held at the Hampshire record office.

The collection in the Willis Museum was threatened with closure some years ago, but happily, that was seen off. The Friends of the Willis Museum support acquisitions from time to time. It was difficult to lose our old and cluttered museum in New Street and get a rather generic museum, although there are plenty of truly Basingstoke objects. More recently, the Sainsbury Gallery on the ground floor has made some very interesting exhibitions possible, with the upstairs room used for local society exhibitions.

I think it's well known that a makeover for the exhibition space is long overdue. But if you've never been there then go! The museum is now open from Wednesday to Sundays for visitors.

It has a nice cafe and some of Mr Willis’s early finds can be seen on the very top floor.

An excellent biography of George Willis is Derek Wren’s Dear Mr Willis. (Fisher Miller Publishing, North Waltham. 1997).