Strawbery Banke Museum

The place that is today called Strawbery Banke has a long and rich history, stretching back three and a half centuries to the earliest years of English settlement in New England where people have lived and worked in our neighborhood. Their original homes, shops, taverns and gardens survive today to tell their stories. Share these stories during a visit to Strawbery Banke Museum.

The Museum provides the opportunity to experience how people lived throughout four centuries of New England history. In 1630 Englishmen chose the site for a plantation called Strawbery Banke, named for the profusion of wild berries they had found near the river. By the eighteenth century the site was a thriving waterfront neighborhood in an important seaport called Portsmouth; in the nineteenth century it changed into an immigrant neighborhood named Puddle Dock; and by the latter half of the twentieth century it had recaptured its original name as an outdoor history museum.

Through restored furnished houses, exhibitions, period gardens, historic landscapes, and costumed role players, Strawbery Banke interprets the living history of the generations who settled in Portsmouth, NH from the late 17th century to the mid-20th century. Saved from urban renewal in the 1950's, Strawbery Banke preserves an actual neighborhood where visitors can connect with the past and its people. And the museum, is dedicated to the study of the lives of these people and others who left their mark on Portsmouth's history.

Open daily May - October, for tours November - April(closed January). Admission charge.

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