Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology
Coordinates: 27°04′15″S 153°01′22″E / 27.0709°S 153.0228°E The Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology, is an Australian public museum dedicated to the preservation and display of antiquities, fine art, archaeology and cultural heritage. Situated in Caboolture, Queensland, it opened in 1986. Displaying a unique collection of tools, weapons, pottery, ornaments, furniture and other artefacts, the Abbey collection spans through prehistoric hunters; the age of bronze and gold; great civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece; the Roman Empire; medieval knights, plagues and illuminated manuscripts; Renaissance Europe; and art from India and the Far East. The museum is the heir to the collections of the Abbey Folk Park (1934–1945) at Park Road, New Barnet; Great Britain's first open-air Folk Museum, and has been recognised as a nationally significant heritage collection.
The museum has its roots in the Abbey Folk Park which was established by Rev. John S.M. Ward (1885–1949) at Barnet, north of London, in 1934. Antiquarian, author, educator, mystic and spiritualist, Ward's museum was for its time, as unconventional as its founder. Rejecting the traditional model of the museum and influenced by the Skansen Folk Museum in Sweden, Ward opted to display artefacts in sympathetic surroundings. Dubbed by the press "The man who collects houses" Ward saved several historical buildings from destruction and had them rebuilt on the site at New Barnet, which was also home to the Confraternity of the Kingdom of Christ, a religious community that he founded in 1929. To display his substantial collection of prehistoric artefacts Ward constructed a replica Bronze Age village, becoming in the process a pioneer of experimental archaeology and 'open air' museums.
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