Museum of Saint Helena
a museum in Jamestown, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha
The Museum of Saint Helena is a museum on the island of Saint Helena, a British Overseas Territory in the south Atlantic Ocean. It has an extensive collection covering the maritime, military and social history of the island over two floors. It also has a small gift and book shop and an adjoining gallery for temporary exhibits.
History
The museum is managed by the Saint Helena Heritage Society, who were established in November 1979. They opened the museum on 23 May 1980. The museum was originally housed in Broadway House, however as the collection grew significantly, there was the need to find larger premises, and campaigns for a new museum began in 1996. The museum later moved to a late-18th-century stone building, formerly the old power station, at the foot of the hillside stairway, Jacob's Ladder, in lower Jamestown, Saint Helena's capital. Work started in March 2000, and the new museum was officially opened on 21 May 2002, the quincentennial anniversary of the island's discovery, by the Governor, David Hollamby.
Many exhibits in the museum were salvaged from shipwrecks around the island.
The museum is one of two on the island, the other being Longwood House, the house that Napoleon Bonaparte stayed in during his incarceration on St Helena.
The public source identifies “Museum of Saint Helena” as a museum in Jamestown, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Museum, Saint and Helena.
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Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6941011. Authority coordinates are -15.925, -5.719. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979, 1980, 1996 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Museum of Saint Helena” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.