Please see Styx thread on the Registered Shipmates consultation for the main discussion forums - your views are important, continues until April 4th.
Local Museums
Over the last few years, Macarius and I have visited quite a few towns in England - not big cities, but small towns - and as a consequence, have visited quite a few local museums. I love 'em! My extensive investigations have shown me that the typical small local museum will have on display:
- the enamel sign from the local railway station that was shut by Beeching
- part of the machinery from the local brewery OR mill that existed from 1720 to 1983
- the spouts from 3 mediaeval jugs
- a 17th century shoe found in the roofspace of an old cottage in the High Street OR a 17th century hat found behind the wainscot of an old cottage in the High Street
- two ration books and
- a photo of girls in frilly dresses standing in front of floral decorations celebrating Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
You might additionally get a neolithic flint and a photo of the local big house being used as a military hospital during the First World War.
This got me wondering what Shipmates would expect to find in little local museums where they live?
MMM
- the enamel sign from the local railway station that was shut by Beeching
- part of the machinery from the local brewery OR mill that existed from 1720 to 1983
- the spouts from 3 mediaeval jugs
- a 17th century shoe found in the roofspace of an old cottage in the High Street OR a 17th century hat found behind the wainscot of an old cottage in the High Street
- two ration books and
- a photo of girls in frilly dresses standing in front of floral decorations celebrating Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
You might additionally get a neolithic flint and a photo of the local big house being used as a military hospital during the First World War.
This got me wondering what Shipmates would expect to find in little local museums where they live?
MMM
Comments
http://jewishmuseumsj.com/home.html
The local museum in Luton, where I grew up, was filled with information on straw plaiting for the local hat industry (hence Luton Town Football Club being called 'The Hatters'.
Though probably too important to be considered 'local' ,Horniman's museum in Forest Hill London has the wonderful over stuffed walrus.
There's a weird folk museum in Leominster, that fascinated us when we visited.
Has anyone been to the Southwold Museum? Very professional, as one might expect. The quirkiest museum I've been to is the Bakelite Museum in Somerset (does it still exist?) though the Dog Collar Museum (nothing to do with Vicars) in Leeds Castle, the Greenwich Fan Museum and the Sir John Soane Museum run it close. And, for sheer amazement, go to the (adjoining) Pitt-Rivers and Natural History museums in Oxford. The first has the most remarkable ethnographic display possible - arranged in a very Victorian way (it's also dim but you are given wind-up torches), the second has an incredible building.
MMM's list holds good.
One of the best things I've seen in a local museum is a copy of a film made to coincide with The Festival of Britain in High Wycombe. It's worth a visit to the town just for that. A number of towns commissioned films about themselves they were supposed to show future generations what life was like at that time. Few were made and even fewer survive. It was shot within living memory but it's like a throwback to a lost world. It's very much like Harry Enfield's spoof Mr Chalmondley-Warner films. There's a terrific sequence of a woman trying on a 'het' at a milliner's and not even consulting her husband to indicate how times had changed. The voice over is going, 'How ebout thet, madam? Does this one suit you, madam?'
It's a gem. Men in thick tweed three piece suits puffing pipes in the town hall and saying, 'The way I see it ...'
The agricultural museum in Usk was delightfully chaotic last time I visited.
It's interesting reading some of these, thanks! I'd forgotten the pencil museum, and the Soane is terrific. I missed that when we last went to Southwold, Heavenlyannie.
Reading museum has a reproduction of the Bayeux tapestry embroidered by the ladies of the town in the 19th century, which is worth a look.
MMM
MMM
At the other end of the village is the entirely wonderful Highland Folk Museum. A bit like the more famous Beamish, with buildings brought and reconstructed etc. And a wonderful old fashioned post office which still has the boiled sweets in jars - Soor Plooms!
Locally, the Aberystwyth Museum - housed in a former theatre-cum-cinema which can still be used as a theatre (Patience will be performed there next spring) is well worth a visit.
It does bug me that so many 'should be held locally' items are actually in London. If the British Museum really want to show what the Lewis Chessmen look like, then they should have replicas; the originals ought to be in Lewis.
Sunderland had two museums, the big formal one and one in the old train station at Monkwearmouth and South Shields has two, one on a Roman site and another standard museum, with Roman tile and dog paw print.
Lots of these museums have dressing up boxes.
We then had to stand outside in the freezing cold while my in-laws took photos of the girls outside the museum.
We went there after the Macpherson museum and 100% agree with this - it was great! Though sadly we didn't have time to go round all of it, but we definitely made sure we went to the sweet shop (purely for the girls, of course...).
The provision for children in all the local museums I've been to seems to have been good, with snippets of information, dressing up boxes etc. I suspect they host lots of school parties (in fact, the last one we went to, we were nearly run over by lots of 6 year olds being shown a mock up of a Victorian parlour by patient teachers.
MMM
I used to make bobbin lace, so when we stayed in Honiton some years ago, I demanded to go to the local museum. It has the usual mixture of local items, but also has the most amazing collection of lace as Honiton lace was highly sought after. As I told one of the attendants that I was a lacemaker, we were given almost a guide tour of the lace section. I still remember a lace shawl depicting a hedgerow - such fine work.
I also have hands of a similar size to Stone Age women, because I could get my fingers into the indentations on a Stone Age pot on show at the Museum of London, which fascinated the exhibitor and had me adding indentations to the pot in progress. They had been convinced that this was evidence of children making pots until then.
I am really not that ridiculously small - 5'2", size 4 feet.
His photo and medals are still there but the cuttings and poem have vanished. There's little indication that my great uncle killed anyone during the war.
* The local newspapers claimed that he killed ten, but the regimental history says five and only three dead were "mentioned in despatches."
That museum is one of the reasons she wants a vagina museum.
I grew up in Derby and the museum there had a version of a record player that I always loved.
It did too. I had forgotten that. And I remember loving that too.
(It was a very very long time ago)
I've been there, and yes, it's good. It features in a book called 'Bollocks to Alton Towers' which readers of this thread might well find diverting.
If you are ever in Dublin, get on the DART train to Dun Laoghaire and go to the maritime museum. We did, to fill an afternoon, and were offered a guided tour. I was a bit reluctant but smiled through gritted teeth and said 'that would be lovely' - and it was brilliant. Loads of great info from a really switched on and engaging retired ship's radio officer. I must go again.
Closer to home, I volunteer at the Anson Engine Museum. It's a kind of a monument to what made global warming possible. And, when working there, the biggest rustiest scrap pile to play in (relatively) unsupervised for miles around.
I love odd museums but I think my favourite is Eskdale Mill at Boot in the Lake District. Apart from a few handwritten signs it looks as though the last miller simply shut the door behind him and left it to gather dust.
AG
-two or three rooms in an old house
-open only during tourist season (ie July and August) and staffed by a university student on a summer jobs grant
-full of a random assortment of objects and photos obviously culled from people's clean-outs of their attics, or of Nan's house after she died, when the only thing that anyone could think to do with it was "donate that to the town museum!"
My all-time favourite was not in Newfoundland but in Nova Scotia, in the little town of Tatamagouche, where the local museum contains (among other things) a glass display case featuring a number of antique tools, farm implements and other objects, with a plaintive note explaining that nobody knows what these things are or what they were used for, so if you, the visitor, recognize any of them, can you please tell the museum staff.
I came here to suggest that one. The perfect size of museum.
Macarius suggested I should add to my list the photograph of the absolutely stunning local find with the bitter little label underneath that the object is now in the British Museum.
MMM
(We've definitely seen this, but can't remember where; we've visited a lot of little museums over the last few years - we used to meet up somewhere for the weekend every 4-6 weeks and explored the area with Treasure Trails and/or walking. Wet weekends meant we saw all the local inside stuff, including the museums.)
And neatly embroidered by the said aperture are the words Dieu le veult (God wills it).
Priceless!
And strangely enough for a museum, there is also an exhibit dedicated to a Future event in the town: we can lay claim to being (one of the places) where Scotty in Star Trek comes from (will come from)
Another museum I adore is The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, CA. It has a unique collection of items from different folks' philosophical, historical, and scientific hobby-horses. Some folks had very strange ideas about the world around them with the artifacts to prove them. Others had important serendipitous moments like that of Dr, Fleming the discoverer of penicillin. The rooms are dark and reverent with old-fashioned display cases. It also has the most elegant ladies' loo that I have ever seen, and a lovely tea room on the top floor.