Old Courthouse Museum

The Local History Museum, or Old Courthouse Museum, was built in 1866 in Aliwal Street as a court house and was fortified at the outbreak of the Anglo-Zulu war in 1879. The building is reputed to have had the first elevator in Durban, to allow the judges to move easily between their chambers and the court room.

It houses a collection of period costumes, dating back to the 1920s, maps, documentation and photographs. There is a display of movers and shakers in Durban's history and a number of dioramas including a wood and iron Victorian cottage, an Edwardian pharmacy, early European settler Henry Francis Fynn's wattle and daub hut, and the Clairmont sugar mill at the turn of the century.