The primary objective of the Judge's Lodging is manage and promote the Judge's Lodging as a museum and historical attraction, educational resource and local history centre for the benefit of the local community and wider public.
Once called ‘the most commodious and elegant apartments for a judge in all England and Wales' (Lord Chief Justice Campbell, 1855), the Judge's Lodging combines interiors hardly touched by time and original furnishings to deliver an historic house with a difference. Our total ‘hands-on' policy allows visitors to actually sit in the judge's chair, study his books, even pump water in the kitchen. Only the commodes are off limits!
Featuring stunningly restored judge's apartments, dingy servants' quarters lit by the original gaslights, visitors are accompanied by an eavesdropping audio tour of voices from the past. Mary the hardworking maid, Reverend Richard Lister Venables, Chairman of the Magistrates and employer of the famous diarist Francis Kilvert, are portrayed by actor Robert Hardy. Damp cells are a reminder of the building's true purpose, along with the vast courtroom and echoing trial of William Morgan, local duck thief.