Special Exhibitions 2026
​Through Wallingford’s Workhouse Door
Explore, Experience, Endure
Step inside one of Wallingford’s most powerful and challenging histories.
This new exhibition invites visitors to cross the threshold of the Workhouse and discover what life was really like for the men, women, and children who passed through its doors — not by choice, but through necessity.
Through real stories, original records, displays, and newly commissioned artwork, Through Wallingford’s Workhouse Door reveals daily routines shaped by rules, labour, and discipline. Visitors will explore how families were separated, how work and food were controlled, how uniforms carried stigma far beyond the Workhouse walls — and how, even within a harsh system, moments of compassion still emerged.
Visitors can:
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Try on replica workhouse clothing
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Explore daily routines, diets, and labour
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Take part in hands-on activities such as oakum picking
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Encounter real individuals through local stories and census records
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Reflect on how past attitudes to poverty still echo today
Designed for all ages, the exhibition offers clear, accessible interpretation for younger visitors alongside deeper insight for adults and researchers.
Through Wallingford’s Workhouse Door asks us to look beyond rules and records — and to remember the people who lived, worked, endured, and survived within these walls.
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'Agatha Christie's Wallingford'
Wallingford Museum will mark the 50th anniversary year of Dame Agatha Christie's death at Winterbrook House, with a special exhibition highlighting aspects of life in Wallingford during her later life.
With the completion of Max’s archaeology in the Middle East, Agatha and her husband spent much more time in their latter years at home in Wallingford. In the 1950s-70s she and Max were both busy writing – he, compiling his archaeological reports and Memoirs, and she, writing her later novels. Letters and locally gathered memories reveal some of the difficulties and joys they experienced as older age approached. Love of pantomime and dogs feature among the aches and pains – with new material displayed for the first time.
It was a time when Wallingford was developing, celebrating the 800th anniversary of the granting of its Charter, visited by the new Queen, and growing in size. The town was experiencing the coming of the first housing estates and the building of the new ABM Maltings, while also facing the possibility of significant development in its centre.
With many images of the town during these significant later years, the exhibition presents a fascinating view of the Wallingford Agatha and Max Mallowan would have known as ‘home’.
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