Our Society

Dorset Museum is owned and cared for by members of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society.

A lively organisation of over 2,000 members, it was Dorset’s first conservation organisation being established to collect, preserve, research and exhibit objects relating to the archaeology, natural history, art, literature, and culture of Dorset.

Foundation of the Society

An independent Society, Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club was founded by James Buckman from the result of a meeting at the Digby Hotel, Sherborne on 16th March 1875. The Society was modelled on the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field Club of which he had been a member. Buckman was the secretary of this club and editor of The Proceedings until his death in 1884.

The Field Club worked in friendly cooperation with the Museum Society for many years.  The two organisations amalgamated in 1928, under the new title of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, owning and running the affairs of the Dorset Museum.

Portrait of James Buckman (1814-1884)
By Philipa Kemmis Rowe, c. 1840.

James Buckman with an ammonite by his side. Buckman studied these and other fossils from Dorset’s oldest rocks.  He became a Professor of Botany, Geology, and Natural History, and had a keen interest in archaeology.