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The brand new 'Southend Museums Collections Centre' is now open, making a millennia of unseen South Essex history accessible for the very first time.

Southend Museums Collections Centre (SMCC) officially opened on March 7th 2026. Located on the 2nd floor of the Beecroft Art Gallery building, SMCC offers the community special, previously impossible access to the entire archaeology and social history collections, and a behind-the-scenes look into museum curation, conservation and research work.
The move from an offsite, inaccessible store to an in-house collections centre has been an opportunity to reorganize and redesign the way the collections are stored while improving accessibility for staff and visitors. Tens of thousands of objects making up the archaeological, natural history, and material culture collections have been moved to their new homes at SMCC – including a vast assortment of EKCO radios, artefacts from the Roman 'Wickford Well' excavation site, original stone from Prittlewell Priory, the full London shipwreck assemblage and much more.
Join us for a guided store tour led by a Southend Museums' curator, to explore behind the scenes of the museums service, get a closer look at our archaeological, material culture and natural history collections and discover what it takes to care for items spanning a millennia of South Essex's heritage.

Tours last for approximately 1 hour, and will commence from the new SMCC reception area on the 2nd floor of the Beecroft Art Gallery.