Helping us to keep the museum virus-free

Help us to keep welcoming visitors to a fresh, virus safe and socially-distanced museum

We do amazingly well at providing families with much relied upon fun and affordable craft activities during the holidays, giving schoolchildren the giggles as they see their classmate being led from a Victorian lesson to be caned and immersing people in the atmosphere of the world’s last remaining Monitorial schoolroom.

Nearly 16,000 visitors last year explored the stories unleashed within our classrooms. Help us bring visitors back to discover new things about their community safely, to wander around the exhibitions at a social distance and to enjoy fresh new pictures and displays that will tell even more stories.

With your help we can make sure our visitors feel comfortable and safe, while really enjoy their time with us.

Some examples include:

£7.50 provides 10 visitor groups with personal hand gel sanitizer

£40 buys a new street-side banner to show we are open

£250 paints the outdoor woodwork so we look loved and cheerful

£640 means new signage shows a safe distance route around to new displays

£1000 will keep our visitors warm in the colder months

£1600 powers our education programme to the end of the year

Just like their parents who visited in their youth and as hundreds of thousands have done so before them, our visitors can again share in the amazing story of Joseph Lancaster and his part in primary education and the social history of childhood.

Thank you for helping us to make the museum the place where ‘Learning Comes to Life’!

Please donate through our Golden Giving website by clicking on the donate button, or send cheques made payable to'Hitchin British Schools Trust' and send to:

'Museum reopening fundraiser, British Schools Museum, 41-42 Queen Street, Hitchin SG4 9TS, United Kingdom'.

When sending cheques, please do consider Gift Aiding your donation - it allows us to claim back 25p in every £1 from the Government. The form can be downloaded here (Word version) or downloaded here (PDF version) - please print off and return with your cheque.