Pharmacy collection

When Norwich pharmacist John Newstead noticed that traditional pharmacies were dying out in the 1960s, he set out preserve what he could from establishments across East Anglia. He built a Victorian style shop behind his house his growing collection. The collection was donated to the museum in 1984.The display is modelled on how a pharmacy would have looked in the 1920’s. It contains the contents and shop fittings of over sixty separate shops. Before the creation of the National Health Service in 1948, pharmacists made medicines using their own recipes, which were recorded in a Prescription Book.