ALTON’S Curtis Museum and Allen Gallery has some new and poignant exhibitions to reflect both historic and forthcoming events.

Looking back to 1916, there is a small upstairs exhibition at the Curtis Museum to acknowledge the service and sacrifice made by Altonians during the Battle of Jutland, with detailed reference to William Weeks (HMS Invincible) and Wyndham James Allwork (HMS Tipperary).

Also on display are two German sailors’ hat bands from the battleships SMS Friedrich der Grosse and SMS Grosser Kurfuerst. Both ships saw action in the battle, with the former being the Fleet Flagship of the German High Seas Fleet Commander and both were scuttled at Scapa Flow at the end of the war.

A year later, on May 31, 1917, the Naval Memorial Wards at Lord Mayor Treloar Cripples’ Hospital and College in Alton were dedicated. The Lord Mayor of London, the Third Sea Lord and Sir William Treloar arrived together with an escort of men of the fourth destroyer flotilla who had fought in the Battle of Jutland. Pictures of the event can be seen in the museum’s local studies area.

New exhibits reflecting forthcoming events include a model of a small general store which depicts the kind of shop that was common in English towns and villages before the arrival of supermarkets. Located in a case next to the Victorian dolls house that used to be in Gilbert White’s House in Selborne, the shop contains a variety of miniature goods from fresh fruit and vegetables to pans and buckets, as well as a shop keeper.

More dolls houses and miniature items will be on show on Saturday, July 30, when the Curtis Museum has its Dolls House Day to launch a range of related accessories for sale.

A second display contains costumes of the era of Jane Austen to highlight Alton’s Regency Week, which started on Saturday.

Many people, including those in Chawton and Alton, would have worked on the land and worn a smock. The Curtis Museum has two smocks on show – one for an adult and the other for a child. Although they were simple to make, these are beautifully embroidered. The third garment is a brown cutaway coat which has been lavishly decorated in coloured silks with exotic fruit and foliage motifs and must have belonged to a wealthy man like those that Jane’s brother Edward would have mixed with.

Such families would have had a large staff, and visitors to the Allen Gallery on Church Street on Thursday will have the opportunity at 7.30pm to find out more, from ‘Stedman the Regency Butler’, about life above and below stairs. Tickets, priced £5, are available from the Allen Gallery on 01420 82802.

* The Curtis Museum on Crown Hill and the Allen Gallery in Church Street are open between from 10am to 5pm, Tuesday to Saturday. Entry is free. To find out more, visit Hampshire Cultural Trust at hampshireculturaltrust.org.uk.