The General Museum
The development of the University's
General Museum was principally
the work of Frederick William
Rudler (1840–1915) who became
the first curator in 1876.
His intention was to found
a central or national museum
for Wales in Aberystwyth
concentrating particularly
on the mining industries.
In only three years he amassed
large numbers of specimens
by appeals for gifts.
The General Museum, housed in Old College
Rudler
also amassed a great deal
of geological, botanical
and palaeontological material,
some through an exchange
with other museums. Rudler's
views on collecting and the
role of the Museum are expressed
in his article for the College
Magazine —‘The old coin,
the autograph or the pot-sherd
may teach more of real vivid
history than an ordinary
student can learn from many
pages of a book'—such a statement
anticipates a tenet dear
to many latter-day students
of material culture, not
least art historians. In
1879, at the end of Rudler's
short time as Curator, George
E. J. Powell began to donate
his collections, initially
in the form of Roman and
Egyptian antiquities.
Selection of items from the General Museum, including items from the Powell Collections
Professor Hubert John Fleure
(1877-1969) kept the Museum
going in one form or another
from c.1910 until 1929. Fleure,
who was the first Professor
of Geography in Britain,
extracted enough voluntary
support and money from the
University for the continued
existence of the Museum.
His interests were as wide-ranging
as Rudler's; he wrote many
works on anthropology. A
humanist and a keen advocate
of the ideas of William Morris,
Fleure was eager for the
Museum to promote the Arts & Crafts
Movement's philosophy as
part of a more broadly based
educational provision for
students, schoolchildren
and local people. With inadequate
resources it was to be an
uphill struggle. Fleure's
often repeated hope that
the Museum should be instrumental
in ‘liberalising' the students'
education was in great danger
of remaining unrealised until
Gwendoline and Margaret Davies
of Llandinam intervened with
their generous gift to the
Museum in 1918.
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