The Tudor House museum was built at the end of the reign of Elizabeth I at the beginning of the 17th Century. It has the traditional double gable style of the period and stood facing a body of water known as ‘The Ope’, a Dorset word for a cove or inlet.

This was infilled in about 1780, and some years later houses were built on the recovered land. The Tudor house survived flood, plague and wars but was almost demolished in 1938 when it was declared unfit for habitation by the Borough Medical Officer. It was later acquired by Ernest Wamsley Lewis, the founder of Weymouth Civic Society, so that it could be preserved for the town.