It was established in 1932, (as the Herne Bay Museum) and is notable for being a seaside tourist attraction featuring local archaeological and social history, for featuring the history of the town as a tourist resort, for its local art exhibitions and for its World War II bouncing bomb.

The exhibits are owned by Herne Bay Historical Records Society, and loaned to Canterbury City Council museums service.

He rescued stone tools, pottery and artefacts turned up by workmen and builders in the area, benefiting greatly from the constant excavations of F.W.J.

[1] Harold Gough was a successor to Dr Tom Bowes in that he was a local writer, historian and honorary curator of the Herne Bay Records Society who helped to run the museum for many years.

Themes include the surrounding area, holidays, piers, the clock tower, archaeology, palaeontology and local history.

Thus the museum provides material for education about evolution as well as preserving a sense of local identity, as oral history would have done in previous cultures.

[11] Most of the museum's collections are owned by the Herne Bay Historical Trust, which inherited them from Dr Tom Bowes.

[12] The main attraction for tourists is a prototype of the World War II Barnes Wallis Highball bouncing bomb that was tested in the sea off Reculver between 6 April and 13 May 1943.

The location was chosen because the shallow water allowed easy recovery at low tide, and it was secure and close to RAF Manston.

Palaeontological exhibits include mammoth tusks and an educational search exercise for children to find sharks' teeth: first in trays at the museum, where there are five Stratolamia macrota, and then in the sand and small stones at low tide.

It consists of the following 50–60 million-years-old items: sharks' teeth Stratolamia striata and Odotus obliquus; green sandstone from the Thanet Sands layer containing the tiny bivalve shell fossils Corbula regulbiensis; fossil wood and pine cones; Thanet Sand containing the bivalve shell Cucullaea decusata; fossil oyster shells Ostrea bellovacina; the large bivalve Arctica scutellaria; Arctica morrisi bivalve casts, one with shell; brown sandstone from the Oldhaven Beds layer with shark's tooth; Arctica morrisi and other bivalves in Oldhaven Beds sandstone; stems of the sea lily, which is related to the sea urchin; fossil fish backbones; Ice age mammoth tooth; sea-worn mammoth tooth; selenite sand roses (not fossils); selenite crystals from London Clay layer.

[6] Roman exhibits found at the fort or in the sea nearby include a limestone building block, Belgic ware, redware, an iron clench pin, a barbed arrowhead, a funerary urn or poppy beaker, pipe clay figurines, a marble carving, a ragstone lamp, styluses, bone pins, a shale spindle whorl and wall plaster.

[6] In 669 CE, long after the fort was abandoned in the fourth century, King Egbert granted land to the priest Bassa to build Reculver church.

They tended to contain quaint and voyeuristic flicks: a typical one still in use at Southend pier in 1963 had a butler peeping through a keyhole to see his lady employer showing her ankles and voluminous bloomers.

[6] Some exhibits give coverage of Herne Bay's wartime history, and they include a baby's gas mask, dated 1939.

Workshops involving practising artists and related to the changing special exhibitions programme are planned for schools as a further focus on making art.