The story starts in 1988, with a group called the Friends of Lymington Museum campaigning for the town to have a museum at all. By the following year, they had begun collecting objects. By 1992, they had a trust. The breakthrough came when New Forest District Council handed over the old school building on New Street, and Hampshire County Council helped fund a curator. A modest 'Museum in a Room' opened alongside a shop and visitor centre in 1995. Galleries followed in 1997, and the full museum displays opened in 1999. Few small museums can trace such a clear lineage from volunteer enthusiasm to accredited institution; the building, the collection, and the programme were all assembled by people who simply wanted a museum in their town.

What makes St Barbe punch above its weight is the loan list. The gallery has worked with Tate, the V&A, and the British Museum, and joined a National Maritime Museum touring scheme. The 2015 show 'Shorelines: Artists on the South Coast' drew national attention. The 2018 exhibition 'Dazzle: Disruption and Disguise in War and Art', part-funded by Arts Council England, examined the bewildering geometric ship camouflage of the First World War and earned prime-time TV coverage. A 2017 refurbishment enlarged the gallery so it could host work at this scale. The museum holds full accreditation, achieved in 2013, and has run a continuous exhibition programme since April 1998.

St Barbe is not only a gallery. The New Forest around it spans roughly twenty-two villages along a varied coastal and woodland landscape, and the museum has positioned itself as the area's cultural living room. 'Tea and Memories' invites older residents to handle historical photographs and share what they remember. 'Knit and Natter' is a social knitting group whose work sometimes ends up tied to current exhibitions. Family programming runs through school holidays. The Old School Cafe sits at the front of the foyer, the gift shop just behind, stocked with goods from local makers. Partnerships with Hampshire Cultural Trust, the New Forest National Park Authority, and a clutch of regional arts groups extend the reach beyond the building.

Step outside the museum and Lymington itself is the larger exhibit. Cobbled lanes drop down toward a Georgian quay where yachts crowd the Solent. The town has been a salt-making centre, a smuggling port, and a Royalist stronghold; the museum's collections - several thousand objects strong - sit inside that long history. The exhibition titles tell the story of an institution willing to range widely: 'Erie' (a meditation on a Great Lake), 'Dinosaurs on Your Doorstep' (the local Mesozoic), 'Contemporary Cuts' (printmaking). Few towns of Lymington's size manage to sustain a programme this ambitious; St Barbe does it by leaning on volunteers, lottery support, and the stubborn conviction, dating back to 1988, that a town like this deserves a museum like this.