Museum News for November
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Visiting the Museum!
From November, our opening hours will be Wednesday-Saturday 10-4.30pm, Sunday 2-4.30pm
Closed on Mondays.
Tuesdays will be reserved for pre-booked group visits by schools and other parties
www.saffronwaldenmuseum.org
We no longer require online advance booking.
Please pay by cash or card at our welcome desk on arrival at the museum.
In the interests of safety, we encourage
- Wearing of face coverings
- Maintaining social distance
- Using hand sanitiser
These measures are no longer compulsory.
The QR code for the NHS Track & Trace app is displayed in the foyer for visitors who wish to scan it, but it is no longer compulsory for visitors to provide us with contact details.
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Object of the Month
The Museum’s ‘Object of the Month’ provides an opportunity to explore interesting and unusual objects from our stores.
November’s Object of the Month is a bronze and iron lynch pin from an Iron Age chariot wheel, chosen by our Curator Carolyn Wingfield. It is at least 2,000 years old and was found in Radwinter parish by local detectorist James Patmore, who has kindly loaned it to the Museum.
This lynch pin is far more than just a functional piece of metalwork from a horse-drawn cart; it is a beautifully cast and decorated piece of late Iron Age bronze work and was made for the chariot of an ancient British warrior.
The lynch pin keeps the hub of a wheel in place. In Britain, there is evidence for the use of horses and wheeled vehicles from the Bronze Age, but the use of horses in warfare seems to have developed among the warrior class of Iron Age society. Their mastery of lightweight, two-wheeled chariots, drawn by a pair of native ponies, was described and admired by Julius Caesar, in his campaigns in Britain of 55 and 54 BC:
"In chariot fighting the Britons begin by driving all over the field, hurling javelins, and generally the terror inspired by the horses and the noise of the wheels are sufficient to throw their opponents’ ranks into disorder….even on a steep incline they are able to control the horses at full gallop, and to check and turn them in a moment”.
(Julia Caesar, The Conquest of Gaul, translated by S A Handford, 1951, Penguin Classics)
Some chariot lynch pins have enamel inlay surviving, as on another example on display in the Museum, though this lynch pin, acquired in the 19th century, has one end missing and no record of where it came from. Iron Age lynch pins like these are found occasionally across Britain, and are thought to date from around 300 BC to AD 100. So the Radwinter lynch pin is a very welcome addition to the displays. Who knows, maybe its owner was fighting during Caeser’s campaigns, or the Roman invasion of AD 43, or even Boudicca’s revolt of AD 60-61?
To find out more visit the Museum in November or check out the Blog on our website.
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Current Exhibition
Fossilisation: a slice of the Anthropocene
Runs until 20 Mar 2022
Fossilisation features original bronze and mixed media sculpture by acclaimed artist Kabir Hussain.
Drawing on the concepts of fossilisation and preservation and accompanied by objects from across the museum collection, Fossilisation: a slice of the Anthropocene questions what traces of modern society might remain in the fossil and geological record thousands of years from now.
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We are very pleased that Kabir’s original sculptures are for sale throughout the exhibition period, with pieces available for collection once the exhibition has closed.
Kabir has exhibited at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, and completed various residencies across London and the East of England. He is based near Woodbridge, Suffolk, where he combines his art with a career as a professional bronze caster, and educational work for students and emerging artists.
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Snapping the Stiletto Project :
Campaigning for Equality
This month we are delivering two historic creative writing walks with author Hannah Jane Walker on the theme of local non-conformist women
Wednesday 10th November
or
Saturday 13th November
10am-12.30 noon
Free event
(but Museum Admission fees still apply)
For more information and to book online use Art Tickets or phone/email the Museum using the details at the bottom of this bulletin.
https://saffron-walden-museum.arttickets.org.uk/
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Moorcroft
Saffron Gold Vase
A recent addition to the museum collection has been this Moorcroft vase which has been produced to celebrate 35 years of Hugh and Maureen Edwards of Thaxted having stewardship of Moorcroft Pottery, one of England’s oldest Arts and Crafts potteries.
It is decorated with the distinctive Saffron Crocus (Crocus Sativus)
This one has kindly been purchased for the collections by the Museum Society to go on display in the Museum in loving memory of Gillian Ram, a loyal dedicated volunteer at the museum & member of the Museum Society.
Pictured left to right are Dave Johnson, Moorcroft Sales Director; Gillian's husband, Dr. Ronald Ram, Paul Salvidge, a director of the Museum Society and Judith Thompson from the Tourist Information Centre, with the vase on display in the museum's ceramics gallery.
Thank you also to the Walden Local for featuring this story on the front page of their newspaper this week!
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Saffron Walden Museum
Needs You!
Do you follow us on social media, visit our website, receive our e-newsletter?
What do you think about what we do online? We’d love your feedback!
Please complete this short online survey to help us better understand our digital audiences and what you want from us.
The survey is being run regionally by SHARE and the project is called VIE (Visitor Impact East)
Here's the link to the survey:
https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/saffronwalden/
Your responses will help shape our future work and develop content and programmes that meet your needs.
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Fiona runs Cambridge Half Marathon for PMR
Fiona Turnbull who works at the museum ran in the Cambridge Half Marathon in October for the charity PMR. She managed to stick to her training plan of 10 minute miles and found the terrain in Cambridge a lot less hilly than during her training in Saffron Walden!!
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/fionaturnbull2021
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October Half-Term & Halloween
Thank you to everyone who purchased the activity packs and came to the Spooky Forest event during half term.
We appreciate your support and great feedback.
We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!
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Newly Published Collections
Two items from the museum's world cultures collections feature in a new book published by the British Museum and the National Museum of Australia titled:
Ancestors, Artefacts, Empire: Indigenous Australia in British and Irish Museums by Gaye Sculthorpe, Maria Nugent and Howard Murphy.
(The front cover image is titled The Queen and Me, by Vincent Namatjira (2016) acrylic on canvas from the collections of the British Museum).
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Gaye visited the museum in 2019 and photographed the two items with Jenny, our Collections Officer (Human History) and Kevin Lovelock, British Museum photographer.
The two items are a bicornual basket, made of lawyer cane c. 1860-1880, from northern Queensland (which you can see in the image here, being photographed).
Men produced these sculptural baskets of the Queensland rainforest for transporting their personal and ceremonial belongings.
This one was collected before 1880, possibly by the Revd Lord Charles Harvey (1814-1880) during a visit to his son Charles A.R. Harvey in Queensland in 1874. He bequeathed a number of objects to Saffron Walden Museum.
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The second object is a wooden shield from Queensland, decorated with black, white and red ochre c. 1860s-1880s from Central Queensland.
The meaning of the design has not been documented but probably reflects the ancestral designs and country of the unrecorded maker. This item was originally part of the collection of the Reverend Sir Lord Charles Amelius Hervey (1814-1880). It was later bequeathed by Hervey to Saffron Walden Museum.
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Loan return to
Time & Tide Museum, Great Yarmouth
This week we returned a Chinese robe which has been on loan to us for some time back to Time & Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.
It's important that we manage our collections closely in terms of their locations and the condition that they are in.
With collections of around 175,000 items that's a huge task for our small team of collections staff.
Part of that work is managing the loan agreements which cover the collections items we have going in and out of the museum.
Ensuring that historic loans are put on a renewable 5 year basis and regularly condition checked, or in the case of items that are no longer required for display or research that they are returned back to the lender.
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Uttlesford District Creative, Cultural & Arts Sector Baseline Survey
Do you work or volunteer in an arts, cultural, creative, craft or heritage sector organisation in Uttlesford?
Then UDC & Consultancy Cultural Engine are eager to hear from you.
Fill out their online survey
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FJYZYTS
More information about their project can be found on the council's Local Plan site
https://www.uttlesford.gov.uk/new-local-plan
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CV Walden...goes online
We are continuing to collect people's experiences of the Covid-19 outbreak and how it has affected day-to-day life in the district, for future generations to understand.
If you are interested in compiling a diary now that we could archive at a later date that would be really beneficial.
We're also interested in audio and video clips, as well as artistic responses to the current situation, such as artwork, poetry and music, etc. If you are part of a community group or organisation - consider asking your members and contacts to take part in this project.
Contact Jenny Oxley, Collections Officer (Human History) about this project at museum@uttlesford.gov.uk and title your email "CV Walden"
A selection of the material collected for the archive to date, is now available to view online on our website
https://saffronwaldenmuseum.swmuseumsoc.org.uk/cv-walden-archive-covid-19-epidemic/
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Mary Knight
Memorial Service
A memorial service was held on Saturday 9th October at St. Mary's Saffron Walden. Mary's family were delighted to welcome staff and volunteers from the Museum to the service.
The family have launched a charity in Mary's name called The Mary Knight Foundation for Budding Gardeners which they have established with support from Bridge End Gardens to support young people wishing to learn about, study or practice horticulture and gardening, by providing small local grants.
Here Mary is pictured being presented with her Museum long service certificate.
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Lost Language of Nature Project
The project is progressing with conservation work on the little bittern, which is found across Europe, western Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa including Madagascar. It is the smallest member of the heron family in Europe, only about 30cm/12” long, though our specimen is smaller than that. It’s currently on a temporary foam base, waiting for work to conserve and rebuild some of the skin that has been lost from its feet. A blackbird has also had its head reattached and a wing strengthened. Work feels slow but we’ve started on some challenging pieces, so slow and steady is the order of the day! We want to make lasting changes and improvements to the information the museum holds on these items, including folk names, stories and histories of the birds. Please see the website https://www.swmuseumlearning.com/the-lost-language-project or email llon@uttlesford.gov.uk to share your forgotten names and stories.
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Natural Sciences
the photographic collection of Barry Kaufmann-Wright
There’s good progress with the volunteer project working with this photographic collection. With around 70,000 photographic slides, transcribing Barry’s original hand-written reference lists is no mean feat.
About a third of the boxes have original lists and the transcription of these is nearly complete, creating a list on the computer of nearly 15,500 images, which is very easy to search through. Other volunteer-led tasks in this project will include creating lists from scratch for boxes without original lists, and eventually checking through the slides to cross reference with the computer records created.
Digital environmental monitoring project
This project has hit a digital speedbump, with a change in the way wireless internet is provided across the Museum building. The data loggers are designed to connect to a ‘private’ network with a password, whereas the network at the Museum is now an ‘open’ network to allow simpler maintenance and public access. This means that the data loggers don’t connect to it, and will only transfer their measurements when plugged in to a computer. James Lumbard, one of our natural sciences officers is looking for ways to continue the trial, as the current situation gives no time savings when compared to the weekly visits to the mechanical thermohygrographs we currently use.
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Learning & Outreach
Saffron Walden Museum is committed to continuing to share stories from its collections through its learning and outreach services.
We are now welcoming schools and community groups back to the Museum or offering outreach sessions.
Why not book for the next school term or for your community group.
Our loan boxes are also available for hire, £18 for 6 weeks, and will be quarantined in between hires to ensure they are Covid-19 secure.
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Online Learning Hub
Our online learning hub is full of digital resources to help people explore the Museum’s learning and outreach services online.
The aim is to make the Museum’s wide-ranging collections available to support home learning and beyond, as well as providing blended learning for schools and informal groups of all ages from badged groups to the WEA and care homes.
The Learning Hub can be accessed from the Museum website’s homepage www.saffronwaldenmuseum.org or direct www.swmuseumlearning.com
Initially three sessions will be available - Prehistory Hunters, Fantastic Fossils and Adaptions - with more being added in due course.
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Shop Focus
We stock a full range of gifts in the Museum shop all year round, and there are always seasonal special offers and themed products linked to our collections.
With Remembrance Day in November....we have on sale the Victor Heroes paperback books, on sale at £12.99.
The book is a record of each of the 159 men named on the Saffron Walden War Memorial and includes detailed biographies
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Museum Shop Sunday
Museum Shop Sunday is a national initiative held every November to promote museum shops and showcase the great breadth of products they sell.
Author Rachel Morris returns to the museum to give her popular talk about "Creating a Museum from Your Own Life".
Rachel who originally hails from Newport will give a whistle-stop tour of her family's history, how she created a mini museum to tell their stories, how she came to write her book and her career as a museum consultant.
She'll be on hand after her talk to sign copies of her book which will be available for sale.
There is no additional charge for this event, but standard admission to the museum applies.
www.museumshopsunday.org.uk #MuseumShopSunday
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Volunteering
We are always looking for new volunteers to join our team on a regular basis. We would also be delighted to hear from volunteers who are able to provide adhoc ‘cover’ for our regular shift volunteers when they have planned absences such as holidays, hospital appointments, etc.
To find out more about these and ‘Learning and Support’ volunteer opportunities please contact the museum using the details below.
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For full details of our opening times and to book online:
Website: www.saffronwaldenmuseum.org
Email: museum@uttlesford.gov.uk
Phone: 01799 510333
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