The Museum has a complete new display this year [2023] about the history of Etnam Street, one of the oldest and most significant roads in the town. We have joined with pupils of Leominster Primary School, who have created some beautiful drawings and paintings of some of the most interesting buildings in the Street to go in the display.

The Street was carefully planned and laid out about eight hundred years ago with burgages by the monks at the Priory. A burgage was a rental property owned, in this case, by the Priory. Burgages usually consisted of a house on a long and narrow plot of land, with a narrow street frontage. Tenants built their own houses & workshops on the plots & paid the monks an annual rent. The earliest houses would have been timber framed. You can still see some of the wooden framed houses on the street, although many were covered with an outer skin of brick later.

For hundreds of years, the Street was the main road entering the town from the west. Hundreds of people and animals travelled up and down it. Houses large and small, schools, pubs, a Baptist church, and all kinds of businesses grew up. Some thrived and are still there, others have long since disappeared.

Come and find out some very surprising facts about a Street you may think you know very well!