Jersey Heritage has a December declutter

Wednesday, 10 December 2025 at 11:27

Jersey Heritage is having a clear-out of thousands of items in its museum collections.

Jersey Heritage is going through its hundreds of thousands of artefacts to assess the state of individual pieces.

It is first time staff have undertaken a ‘deaccessioning’ project, which will find space for future acquisitions.

Jersey Heritage’s museum collections were originally started by the Société Jersiaise in 1873 and have built up over the last 150 years.

Helena Kergozou, Senior Registrar, explained that any collection items not being kept are either in very poor condition and beyond repair, or an unnecessary duplicate of something in the collections:

"Attitudes towards collecting have changed a great deal.

"Some items in the collections have little or no provenance, no Jersey connection or were in a poor condition when they were accessioned.

“In the past, the acceptance process for collection items was not as rigorous as it is today. Items were sometimes accepted regardless of their condition or whether they were a useful addition to our existing collections."

"For example, we have 199 chairs, many of which are duplicates and some of which arrived broken.

"We also have ten bathtubs, including some that are beyond repair.

“All over the world, museum collection stores are overflowing with objects, and we are no different.

"We have over 300,000 pieces and it is essential that we have adequate space to properly store these pieces."

Items that are still in good condition but not needed by Jersey Heritage may be given to schools or community groups, or made into 'handling collections' so that people can touch the items that they otherwise wouldn't be able to, and 'touch history.'