The Museum of Victorian Door Knobs was established in 1998 by retired hardware restorer and incorrigible enthusiast Gerald Pomfrey, who spent four decades collecting, cataloguing, and lovingly polishing a collection that now exceeds 12,000 individual door knobs, knockers, escutcheons, and related architectural hardware from the Victorian era (1837-1901).

What sounds like an eccentric joke is, in practice, a genuinely revelatory museum. Victorian door furniture tells a sophisticated story of industrial manufacturing, class aspiration, design reform movements, international trade in brass and bronze, and the painstaking craft traditions of hundreds of specialist workshops.

Gerald died in 2015 but left the collection in trust to the local heritage foundation with strict instructions that it remain free to enter and 'absolutely not be made into a children's soft play centre.'