In 1998 a fascinating talk by local historian Dr. Walter Sims was given to the Historical Association of North Norfolk. The subject was 'Museums of Norfolk - Past and Present and under past he included a brief mention of the Ersatz Museum. This wonderful institution was once located on the North Norfolk coast and closed down in the 1970s. Chatting later with several of our older members, who had actually visited this obscure and somewhat lonely museum, they recalled its very strange content and the unusual exhibits including fairy photographs', strange flying creatures and even mer-creatures. At first I believed them to be talking about some sort of wax or toy museum, but was assured they were all real exhibits displayed in the museum. I instantly became fascinated and wanted to find out more.

Fortunately this interest was shared by fellow members, Danial Robertson and Karon Lipman who themselves had only a vague knowledge of the bizarre institution and like myself had never visited it. We joined forces and endeavoured to start researching the subject, at the time thinking that it would be a very interesting, if brief project and when completed could pass any research over to the association for its local archive - that was nearly 6 years ago!

Our initial research met with very little success, with accurate information about the museum being hard to come across. By its very nature it was hidden under stories, rumours and inaccuracies. Very early on we became even more intrigued when we discovered that the Norfolk museum had been founded in what seemed to be very unusual circumstances by a shadowy group known as the Foundation and who it is alleged, had built the Norfolk museum from items taken from a previous museum collection that operated in Poland before the war under the same name.

Even though we spent much of our spare time trying to find out more about the subject, we soon realised that to do this research properly we would need a few more resources and canvas some specialised assistance. We therefore formed the Ersatz Museum Heritage Society, launched on June 9th 1999 (the 40th anniversary of the Norfolks museums opening). This has an open membership of interested local amateur and professional historians and archivists, which indeed has led to many valuable contributions towards our research.

Over the last few years we have found out much about both museums, their very unusual, strange, and often controversial content and some of the people who owned and curated them and with the assistance of members and associates have now built up our own small collection of photographs, documents and memorabilia and perhaps the only definitive history on this subject.
Even after 6 years of research we still have very many unanswered questions concerning both the original Polish institution and ironically, about our local Norfolk based museum, most especially towards the authenticity of items in their respective collections, how and when they found these oddities and curios and what actually happened to them - and so our research continues.

This second web site is therefore meant to both share our research so far, as well as to create an on-line forum in hopes to gain further insights into the subject. especially from people who either visited the museums, may own items associated with them - like photographs, souvenirs etc. or can furnish us with more information about this seemingly neglected subject.

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