The East Grinstead Museum

The East Grinstead Museum is an independent local history museum housed in a purpose-built home on Cantelupe Road, a short walk from the town's medieval High Street. It tells the story of East Grinstead and the surrounding High Weald from prehistory to the present, with displays on the town's coaching-inn past, the arrival of the railway, local industries and the families who shaped the area.

The museum is best known for its collection relating to the Guinea Pig Club, the group of Second World War airmen who underwent pioneering reconstructive surgery at the Queen Victoria Hospital under Sir Archibald McIndoe. Photographs, personal items and oral histories document McIndoe's groundbreaking burns treatment and the close bond that formed between his patients and the townspeople, who welcomed the disfigured airmen into ordinary social life at a time when this was far from usual.

Other galleries include changing exhibitions drawn from the museum's reserve collections, a small research library and a shop. Entry is generally free, with the museum run largely by volunteers, and it makes a natural stop alongside a wander through East Grinstead's well-preserved Tudor and Georgian High Street.