Amberley Museum

Amberley Museum is a major open air museum documenting the heavy industries that once made south-east England prosperous. The site occupied by the museum was formerly the Amberley chalk pits and it is these quarries, kilns, and associated buildings that form the backdrop to the Amberley story of industry and rural crafts that shaped Sussex. The museum is also home to a printing house with fully working machinery and artefacts, including a Columbian ‘Eagle’ flat-bed press (about 1856); engraved copper plates; Linotype machines used in newspaper production; and an Albion lever press amongst many others. Volunteers run the printing house and operate many of the machines, which they demonstrate to visitors, and use to produce museum publications. This is the only working historical printing house in the south of England.

Collection

• Columbian flat-bed press

• Linotype machines

• Albion lever press

• Vertical Miehle

• Multilith

• Selection of metal type

• Engraved copper plates