A UNIFORM worn by one of the town’s Suffragettes and starfish fossils found near Eype are among the new exhibits on show at Bridport Museum this season.

The museum opened its doors on Monday for the first time since scrapping admission fees.

Museum curator Alice Martin said: “It will be an interesting challenge to see if the museum can survive with the scrapping of the entrance fee via increased visitors and donations and a rise in shop sales at the new shop. “Everyone at the museum fully believes that museums should be free and we are grateful for the chance given to us by the South West Hub, Heritage lottery fund, and our other sponsor to trail this exciting new venture.”

Hardwork by the museum’s staff, friends and volunteers has seen four new displays alongside the newly refurbished shop.

New to the ground floor this season is a Jurassic coast gallery full of local fossils thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund, the South West Museums Hubs’ Jurassic coast earth science manager Richard Edmunds and David Tucker Dorset county council’s museum officer.

Stars of the show are local specimens including 180 million-year-old Brittlestars (palaeocoma milleri) from the starfish bed near Eype, fossilised in a giant storm that swept across our shallow seas burying the animals in a split second.

Upstairs, temporary displays show off the museum’s textiles and fine art items.

In ‘Fashion Time’ the display blends the best of the museum’s historic textile collection with room settings full of social history items, including the uniform a Bridport Suffragette.

One item on display is the going-away dress of Mary Samson who married local man Thomas Thorne a tailor in 1878.

The couple’s wedding certificate and portrait photographs are also in the museum’s collection.

The upstairs displays also include photographs from the turn of the last century by local photographers William Shepherd and Walter Stephens.

Modern equivalents were taken by work experience student Eleanor Pritchard, such as the one showing West Bay coastguards then and now. Finally upstairs there is a fine art display showing the work of artist Henry Walton and his wife Gertrude.

The Waltons lived in the Marshwood Vale where they had a house built called Birdsmoorgate and recorded on canvas many local scenes and characters.