Vote for Hertfordshire’s Museum Object of the Year 2025
Voting for Hertfordshire’s Museum Object of the Year 2025 is now open and once again museums from across the county have come up with a fabulously diverse and interesting selection.
Objects include a naked mole rat and a 2.5million year-old Somalian chopping tool.
The annual competition is open to all local museums and highlights the weird and wonderful artifacts exhibited in the county’s museums and as well as the fascinating stories behind them.
This year, twenty-two items have made the shortlist and the winner, will be chosen by a public vote.
You can find out more about the shortlisted items and choose your favourite by visiting Hertfordshire Association of Museums website. Entries close on at midnight on Monday 17 February.
Demonstrating that Hertfordshire really has been ‘the county of opportunity’ this year’s entries include a Moon Landing plaque presented to the senior trials engineer who wrote the launch manual for Apollo 11, the desk used by the 19th-century inventor John Dickinson (whose stationery business came to define the area around Apsley, Batchworth and Croxley) as well as a shop sign from the Ware-based pharmaceutical company Allen & Hanburys (now GSK).
Councillor Caroline Clapper, Executive Member for Education, Libraries and Lifelong Learning at Hertfordshire County Council said, ‘This year’s entries for Hertfordshire Museum Object of the Year highlight the extraordinary contribution Hertfordshire residents have made globally and tell many fascinating local histories and stories. I am always so pleased to see our museums engaging with the award and taking the opportunity to share their collections with the public. How lucky we are to have so many wonderful Collections cared for by committed museum staff and volunteers in Hertfordshire.’
The current title holder is an unusual love token from Watford Museum, while previous winners have included possibly the oldest toilet roll in Letchworth and a pampered and much-loved pooch, Champion Wolverley Chummie from the Natural History Museum at Tring.
