the button museum

eight hundred and fourteen buttons, mounted on twelve cream cards behind glass, in a single low-ceilinged room of the parish house. the friends of st. agnes have run the museum since 1976, when the room was given them in exchange for ringing the bell on tuesdays.

the founding gift was three jars from a woman called bessie penn — bone, horn, brass, glass, jet — emptied straight onto the table in front of the friends at their inaugural meeting. they sorted them in a single afternoon. the jars are still under the table; only the lids are on display.

the smallest button in the collection is two millimetres across — a doll's-button of mother-of-pearl, mounted alone on its own quarter-card. the largest is a bone naval-coat fastener the size of a small biscuit. the friends keep these at opposite ends of the table, and will tell you, if you ask, that the two have never been moved closer.