Augustus Pitt Rivers lived nearby on the Rushmore Estate. Following his donation of some 20,000 antiquities to the University of Oxford in 1884, forming the nucleus of the Pitt Rivers Museum, he continued to collect archaeological and ethnological specimens for his personal collection,Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers biography at the Pitt Rivers Museum History, 1884–1945 which was held in the former Orphan Gypsy School at Crossways, about from Farnham village centre. The village's inn became the Museum Hotel to cater for visitors, which numbered 12,000 per year at the peak of the museum's popularity. The Farnham collection was dispersed in the 1970s, with the British items going to the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, and the ethnographic collections sold.
