Swindon Museum began life in the Victoria Hall on Regent's Circus in 1920 when geologist Charles Gore offered the town his collection of archaeological specimens and became the museum's first curator. However the collection rapidly outgrew its accommodation and by 1932 had moved to the imposing stone built property on Bath Road called Apsley House. Built in 1830 the first leaseholder of Apsley House was surgeon Charles James Fox Axford. No mention is made of the property in Axford's will written in July 1845, shortly before his death and the next occupier was another surgeon, Frederick H. Morris. The third resident was Richard Tarrant, a prosperous coal merchant whose coal yard stood at the rear of the house, on the area now occupied by Paxton House. But it is with another coal merchant that the house is most closely associated. Apsley House was business headquarters and home to the Toomer family for over fifty years. Born in Hampshire, John Toomer mov...