I think that the Mathom House could have been based on the older style of museum quite easily, as I remember from childhood that many seemed to be little more than haphazard collections of 'stuff'. A local museum's exhibits included in one room some stuffed geese, a petrified tree branch and a shrunken head (always surrounded by children). I went to the British Museum many years ago and was fascinated by the way it just seemed to be a collection of random antiquities. Today it is very different, it is properly organised in order to help us mere mortals better understand what we are looking at and I found it quite sterile. I don't know if it is
better that museums now interpret things for us more thoroughly, as I quite liked the element of discovery under the older style.
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Originally Posted by Rumil
I wonder if originally the mathom house had served as the Arsenal of the Shire, where all the rarely-required warlike gear was stored between emergencies. One ancient near-Eastern king apparently pulled off this trick by appearing merely to be an eccentric collector of military memorabilia until his country went to war, whereupon he immediately equipped his entire army with high quality armour and weaponry, to the amazement of the opposition.
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This is a good idea, as many of our modern museums have evolved from arsenals, such as the Royal Armouries. These would have originally been within castles or residences of the monarch, but as The Shire does not have such a leader, it could be possible they would have needed a central or communal place to store weapons.
Though all in all, I like to think that Tolkien just liked the idea of a place filled with all kinds of interesting and dusty Hobbit junk.