Campbeltown Museum

Campbeltown Museum offers a unique insight into Campbeltown’s ancient and more modern past. With a fascinating and nationally important Archaeological Collection, the museum describes the creation of the natural landscape of Kintyre and how its first peoples came to Kintyre to farm the area’s fertile lands. Neolithic stone axe heads and cooking pots, sit alongside Bronze Age jet necklaces and swords. 

Campbeltown Museum occupies a sizeable room in an A-listed building which originally also housed the public library and now provides accommodation for Council offices. The initiative to establish a library and museum came in 1896 from the Kintyre Scientific Association, today still active as the Kintyre Antiquarian and Natural History Society. It was the generous response from Mr James Macalister Hall, a wealthy retired businessman, which turned the dream into reality.

The well-known Glasgow architect J.J. Burnet designed the building and in 1899 Campbeltonians were able to boast their own Free Library and Museum.

Home to:

- an interesting collection of objects from internationally important archaeological sites including objects from the chambered cairn at Beacharra and a jet necklace, which is one of only 10 in Scotland.

- a varied collection of works of art including two oil paintings by William McTaggart and others by local artists, Archibald MacKinnon and John Campbell Mitchell.

- material pertaining to local social, industrial and natural history along with geology and much, much more.