Abbey Museum Audio Descriptions and Recordings

Welcome to The Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology, a journey through 500,000 years of human history.

The Museum respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land and waterways on which the Museum stands. We pay respect to First Nations Elders past and present, who hold the memories, traditions, and culture of this ancient Country.

In the entry there is the front desk and gift shop. To the left of the front desk is the café, bathrooms, and art gallery, which opened in 2024. Straight ahead explore the original museum, opening in its current form in 1986.

The single-storey Museum building has a slate and grey split brick concrete exterior. The interior has soft lighting, flat floors with matt grey tiles and exposed roof beams, creating a warm Tudor-like atmosphere.

Around 800 of the 5000 plus artefacts in the Museum’s collection are on display in a curated time passage. There are 28 display cases along the two passageways. The passageways connect to form a loop, finishing back at the entry and exit.

Reflecting its British origins, the Museum covers prehistoric Europe, Bronze and Iron Ages, the Roman Empire and Medieval Europe up to modern times. The Ancient and Classical World is represented with artefacts from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, Persia, Greece, the Etruscans, and ancient Cyprus. There are also collections from the Islamic world, South East Asia, China, Japan and India.

There is a seating area midway and benches and chairs throughout.

Enhance your experience with audio descriptions and audio recordings of the didactics for all displays in the original Museum. Access on our website and by using the QR Codes located at 1 metre high to the left of each corresponding display or grouping of displays. QR Codes are marked with tactile floor indicators directly below and in print and braille signage. To use, connect to The Museum’s WiFi using your own device and headphones or earbuds.

Please ask our friendly team if you have any questions or need assistance.

Thank you for visiting The Abbey Museum.

Listen to the next recording to hear the full text on the entry sign.

The first display case is straight ahead and on your left.

Some 250,000 years ago, Western Europe was inhabited only by a small group of hunters.

Thousands of years passed and these first hunter-gatherers learnt to domesticate plants and animals, build villages and forge metals.

Settlements evolved into towns and cities, requiring a highly organised central government and complex administration. Trade and commerce helped spread ideas and inventions.

By the 1st century AD Roman armies had created a huge empire that stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia. But after 300 years of peace, its civilisation crumbled before the onslaught of Germanic tribes.

Out of the chaos of this early medieval period the Christian church arose to pacify the wild tribes and preserve the classical heritage – law, the arts and education.

A new class of society emerged – the feudal knight – in an age of castles and manors, chivalry and blood, pilgrimages and plagues.

Merchant traders brought about a new era in the early 14th century – the Renaissance – and, in a climate of humanism and art, science began to challenge the authority of the Church. In Germany a monk called Luther defied the pope and started a reformation.

While kings, parliaments and religious factions battled for supremacy, new discoveries in the 16th and 17th centuries were responsible for an industrial revolution in the 18th century. Vast colonial empires were acquired by Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain.

The last 250,000 years…a pageant of social changes and technology, culture, cruelty, and religious faith.

There is one image. An illustration of a small square with a map featuring the continent of Europe in black. The outline of a circle fills the square and shows a zoomed-in section that encompasses western Europe and the United Kingdom.

Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology Audio Description

Display Case 1: ‘The First Hunters’ circa 1 million years ago, Audio Description

Duration 3 minutes.

This display case is built into the wall and has a square window to look through. Inside, the bottom of the display case is a triangle and there are 2 internal walls. It features examples and information about animals hunted at Swanscombe in Britain, and hunting tools found at this site. The hunting tools are original stone handaxes and flakes, dated from this period and all made of flint. There are 4 tools hanging against the wall on your right and 3 tools presented along the bottom of the display case on a red gravel surface. The walls inside are a light yellow at the top and gradually become a dark orange at the bottom.

On the left wall, along the full width of the top, is an illustration of men with spears and rocks hunting running deers. Underneath it is the title ‘Swanscombe: a stone age site in Britain’. There are 4 animal illustrations in a vertical column along the left-edge of the corner, and the title ‘animals hunted at Swanscombe’.

From top to bottom on the right wall there is the focus object, a pointed handaxe, to which we will return. Next is a cordate or ovate handaxe, a ‘twisted’ handaxe, and pear-shaped handaxe. To the right of these tools is text and accompanying illustrations with the titles ‘fashioning the tool kit’ and ‘cross-section of the levels at Swanscombe’. Along the bottom of the display case from left to right there is a large piece of flint. A tough fine-grained rock, this flint is grey white and rough on the outside, and a glassy dark grey blue where this outer layer has chipped away. Next to it is another pointed handaxe and a flake tool.

The focus object at the top of the right wall, titled ‘pointed handaxe’, is dated circa 480,000 BC. It is a long narrow triangle, pointed at one end and domed at the other. A sharp edge runs along each side. It is crude in form with pockmarks and dark grey blue in colour. It fits in the palm of your hand, measuring 16 centimetres long, 5 centimetres high and 10 centimetres at its widest point. It is from the Middle Gravels in Swanscombe, England, and is typical of hundreds of handaxes found at this site in Barnfield Pit during gravel-digging operations. Handaxes were probably all-purpose tools used for butchering, wood working and root digging, as well as for defence.

Listen to the next recordings to hear the full text on the panels inside this case.

Display Case 2 is located straight ahead 3 metres, on your left-hand side.

Display Case 1: Additional Information

Swanscombe: a stone age site in Britain

Duration 2 minutes.

The first hunters lived during the Lower Palaeolithic age, which is from 2 Greek words palaios – old, and lithos – stone; meaning Old Stone Age. In Europe it spanned from circa 900,000 to circa 45,000 BC.

Throughout the palaeolithic age people lived by hunting mammals, birds and fish and gathering wild vegetable foods. These varied according to changes in climate. Where available, caves were used for shelter. Small groups of hunter-gatherers probably frequented the tropical forests of Britain during the warm interglacials which occurred between severe periods of cold, known as glaciations. Tools made from stone were mostly handaxes and flakes.

At the important site of Swanscombe, south of London, 2 handaxe cultures have been found. While they may have been contemporary it seems the Clactonian, named after the typesite of Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, lived in thick forests along river banks during the Hoxnian interglacial between 250,000 and 200,000 BC. The second group, called Acheulian, possibly exploited more open forest during the cooler end of the interglacial.

The Clactonian was primarily a flake industry using hammer stones to manufacture heavy flakes and pebble choppers. Acheulians used a soft hammer of bone or wood to make their tools. The hundreds of handaxes found at Swanscombe during gravel-digging operations early this century belong to this culture.

Both groups of hunters trapped deer and other animals in swampy ground where they could be easily killed with wooden spears and stones.

There is one image. An illustration above the text of naked men with spears and rocks hunting running deers. It is 40 centimetres high by 60 centimetres wide and brown and yellow in colour with simple lines and shading.

Cross-section of the levels at Swanscombe

Duration 1 minute.

Excavation has revealed the earliest levels of deposition – called Lower Gravels and Loam – contained Clactonian flakes and choppers. The Middle Gravel levels contained Archeulian handaxes and fragments of a female skull – the first Briton known. The Upper Gravels were laid down in the subsequent glaciation.

There is one image. A wide rectangle diagram above the text with corresponding wavy horizontal or diagonal black lines, indicating the levels deposition found during excavation at the site. At the base is Sand, followed by Lower Gravel, Lower Loam, Lower Middle Gravel, Upper Middle Gravel, Upper Loam, and at the top, Upper Gravel.

The animals hunted at Swanscombe

Duration 2 minutes.

Most common of all the animals at Swanscombe was the Clacton fallow deer Dama clactoniana. Archaeological evidence suggests only stags were hunted and females and young animals ignored, the first indication of environmental control. From the size of the antlers, we can deduce that Swanscombe was inhabited during the winter months before the antlers were shed.

The Auroch or the Giant ox Bos primigenius was among the ancestors of modern cattle. A huge beast, over 2 metres at the shoulder, the auroch was more common in the Middle Gravels than in the lower levels.

Merck’s rhinoceros Dicerorhinus kirchbergensis and the Steppe rhinoceros D. hermitoechus inhabited western Europe during much of the occupation of Swanscombe.

Merck’s rhinoceros, the larger of the 2 species, stood 2 metres high and about 3 metres long.

The Forest Elephant Elephas antiquus lived in Europe, Africa and Asia during the warmer interglacial periods of the Pleistocene. It stood over 4 metres at the shoulder. Remains are abundant in the Lower Gravels but decrease by the Middle Gravel levels.

A wide range of other animals were hunted, including wolf, cave lion, marten, cave bear, horse, pig, giant deer, red and roe deer, giant beaver and smaller animals like hare and lemming.

There are 4 images. They are illustrations in a vertical column of the main animals described, the deer, the auroch, the rhinoceros and the elephant.

Fashioning the tool-kit

Duration 1 minute.

Although there is evidence that wood and bone were made into weapons and tools few have survived. Early hunter-gatherers fashioned most of their tool-kit from stone, usually flint or chert.

They used either a hammer stone or hammer made of bone or wood to knock flakes from a core. This is called percussion method. Some heavy flakes had smaller flakes removed to provide a sharper edge. This is called secondary flaking.

Flakes were used as choppers or scrapers for butchering or wood working. Cores were made into hand axes by flaking chips from a core until the right shape was obtained. Hand axes were the predominant tool of the early hunters.

There are 3 images. They are square illustrations in a row above the text of hands fashioning weapons, and the last is of a woman using a weapon to butcher a small animal.