When the Museum of Wimbledon opened to visitors at 22 Ridgway for the very first time 96 years ago on 19 October 1916, it fulfilled a dream dating right back to the mid 19th century.

There were no sophisticated displays or art gallery - let alone the interactive wizardry seen in so many museums today - but for the first time, local people could briefly take their minds off the First World War to see a variety of objects, pictures and items of interest on permanent view right in the heart of Wimbledon Village.

Moreover, it came at no charge to the public purse as it was run entirely by the local conservationist group, the John Evelyn Club, forerunner of today’s Wimbledon Society.

But setting up the museum had been a very long haul indeed. Long before the John Evelyn Club existed, a museum had been planned alongside the reading room, library, and lecture hall of the Village Club when that was founded in 1859 by local surgeon Joseph Toynbee.

Sadly, Toynbee’s accidental death in 1866 as the result of an experiment in his surgery had put the idea on hold and for more 40 years nothing further happened.

Finally in 1903 when the John Evelyn Club was set up in order to help protect Wimbledon’s fast disappearing historical features and natural environment, the new group’s founder, Richardson Evans, proposed forming a local museum and reference library “primarily devoted to the illustration of local annals, antiquities, art and natural history”.

It was a bold aspiration but the local authority showed no interest in funding it. Another three years passed before Evans – who lived at The Keir on Common Westside – was able to organise a special exhibition of watercolours, portraits, maps, books and miscellaneous objects, not at the Village Club but at an Art College in Alwyne Road.

The objects included a falcon’s bell, a wooden ear trumpet and the official coat once worn by the Wimbledon Beadle – all potential exhibits for a permanent museum.

The exhibition proved popular and Evans followed it up by creating another one at his own house.

Wimbledon’s local councillors were invited to see it and he urged them to adopt a more imaginative approach for the public benefit.

They refused. Eventually the Village Club’s own trustees ended the procrastination by inviting the John Evelyn Club to use its reading room for a museum as well as committee meetings.

Evans and his colleagues were delighted and soon decorated and adapted the room, bringing in albums for photographs and press cuttings and a cabinet for prints and maps.

At first the museum was only open on Wednesday afternoons but proved so popular that the hours were extended to every day.

It had to close two years later when the whole building was commandeered for war use and the collection was moved temporarily to Eagle House.

When the museum finally re-opened in April 1920 its hours were limited to Saturday afternoons. Since those early days the Museum of Wimbledon has seen various closures and transfers of its collection, not least during the Second World War when various places of safety were used.

However, the collection itself has always survived and in due course been enhanced as its home at 22 Ridgway has re-opened in triumph. Nowadays the Museum of Wimbledon is open every Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

There have been a series of refurbishments and extensions – most recently the addition of the new art gallery by the Village Hall Trust which allowed this year’s major display of the museum’s collection of historic watercolours.

Before this, there were many special exhibitions such as those commemorating the centenary of Wimbledon Theatre, the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade thanks to local hero William Wilberforce, and the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, won by another local hero, Lord Nelson.