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It is known that some items in the founding collection were displayed at Bethnal Green and some were not (see here for more information) but otherwise the location(s) of many items in that collection are unknown today. The second collection is different.
Whilst we know that we do not know where most items from the second collection are today (because of the dispersal of the collection by Pitt-Rivers' descendants), we do know where Pitt-Rivers decided to put most of his objects and if they were moved. Most objects were moved at least once and these multiple, detailed, locations were noted in the catalogue now held by the Cambridge University Library. These statistics are considered in more depth here.
Most objects were placed in at least one of the following locations after acquisition:
Bethnal Green Museum * = 12 objects
South Kensington Museum * = 182 objects
Penywern Road, London ** = 6 objects
Grosvenor Gardens, London ** = 2424 objects
Rushmore = 9730 objects
Farnham Museum = 16539 objects
King John's House = 173 objects
Larmer Tree Gardens = 27 objects
Hinton St Mary *** = 270 objects
One object might have been noted as being located at 3 or 4 separate locations in the Cambridge University Library. Add.9455vol1_p1 /3, five ancient bronze spears, were located first in Grosvenor Gardens (Pitt Rivers London residence after 1880), then at Rushmore (in an unknown room(s)) and finally in Room 6 at Farnham Museum.
The largest proportion of artefacts listed in the catalogue were located, for at least part of the time, in Pitt-Rivers' private museum at Farnham. The next most common location was Rushmore, his private house in Dorset. There are separate webpages dealing with the items located at Rushmore and Farnham, and there are articles about the objects located there available if you select the Articles section of this website.
Find out more:
South Kensington Museum objects
King John's House, Larmer Gardens objects.
AP, 1 June 2010
Notes:
* Some items which had been displayed at Bethnal Green and South Kensington Museums were obviously transferred back to Pitt Rivers and retained by him. Not many of these are listed in the Cambridge University Library catalogue.
** Pitt-Rivers lived in Penywern Road until 1880 when he inherited from his great-uncle and moved to Grosvenor Gardens for his London residence.
*** Hinton St Mary appears to have been used as the dower house for Mrs Pitt-Rivers after the death of Augustus Pitt-Rivers in 1900, she obviously was allowed to transfer some items acquired by Pitt-Rivers and listed in the catalogue now held by Cambridge University Library to that house.
