Donating objects or collections

Donations by members of the public

Malton Museum welcomes donations to its collection and is very grateful for offers of objects from any period that have a specific connection to life in Malton, Norton or the surrounding area.

If you would like to offer one or more objects for donation to the Museum, the procedure is as follows:

  1. Send an e-mail to [email protected] with a description of your object(s) and ideally one or more photographs of it/them.
  2. The offer will be considered by the Museum’s Acquisitions Committee, taking into account:
    • the Museum’s Collection Development Policy, which sets out what sort of objects the Museum seeks to collect,
    • whether the Museum already has equivalent objects in its collection, and
    • the condition of the object(s) being offered.
  3. A member of the Collections Team volunteers will get in touch to let you know the Committee’s decision.  If the offer has been accepted you will be invited to bring the object(s) to the Museum where you will be asked to fill in a form confirming the transfer of ownership to the Museum.

Please be aware that:

  • the Front of House volunteers are unable to accept objects brought directly to the Museum without having gone through the above procedure,
  • only in exceptional circumstances will the Museum consider purchasing an object offered to it for sale, and
  • the Museum will never exchange objects from its collection for objects offered to it.

Please also be aware that the Museum, being volunteer-run, is unable to offer an object identification service.  If you have an object that you would like to have identified, you can take it along to a finds day in York, Hull or Scarborough (for details see the “Finds Days” section of the Portable Antiquities Scheme Web page on the Yorkshire Museum Web site).

Deposition of archaeological archives

Field Units carrying out interventions in the Ryedale area and seeking to deposit the resulting archives with Malton Museum should, at the earliest opportunity, download a copy of the Museum’s Procedures for the Deposition of Archaeological Archives.