[2][3] The origin of the Sierra Leone National Museum in Freetown dates back to before the country's independence.

The Monuments and Relics Commission, chaired by the retired Creole doctor M. C. F. Easmon, was set up by a 1946 ordinance "to provide for the preservation of Ancient, Historical, and Natural Monuments, Relics, and other objects of Archaeological, Ethnographical, Historical or other Scientific Interest".

[4] In 1953, Governor Sir Robert Hall encouraged the formation of the Sierra Leone Society and then challenged its members, mainly colonial expatriates and the Creole elite of the city,[5] to establish a museum.

[4] In 1955, he offered the old Cotton Tree Telephone Exchange as a temporary location for the museum for a nominal rent.

[2][5] In 2013, the museum displayed the only known photograph of the Temne guerrilla leader Bai Bureh, who in 1898 started a war against the British.