News Update - April 2017
Items in this Update cover:
- Dates for your diary
- Events
- Exhibitions
- Somerset Coalfield Life programme latest news
- Photography/Artwork Competition
- Talks
- The Shop
- Five Arches Journal
- Update on the Clock Tower Work
- Help Required - Holcombe Christmas Crackers
- News
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Dates for your Diaries
Until May 31st Working with Hand Tools exhibition
May 31st Know Your Place Family Fun
Jun 6th - Sep 2nd Norman Matthews Paintings
Mid Sep - End Nov Westfield Community Exhibition
Details of all the events and exhibitions can be found on our website.
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Events
Know Your Place Family Fun!
Wednesday 31st May, Radstock Museum
Come along to our family drop in event on Wednesday 31 May and help put Midsomer Norton high street on the map, design a postcard, look at historic photographs of your area and explore your local history on Know Your Place!
Or why not book onto a free family heritage walk and explore your local area using Know Your Place? Look out for landmarks and have fun on the way, mapping what you find onto Know Your Place afterwards!
Timings and booking details to be confirmed. www.radstockmuseum.co.uk
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Working with Hand Tools …the traditional way
Until 31st May the museum is hosting an exhibition about trades that were carried out locally, covering edge-tool making, agriculture, wheelwrighting, coach and wagon making, coopering, millwrighting, bookbinding, plane making, sash window making, clock and watch making, harness and saddle making.
This exhibition covers the history of these trades, the way the trades were carried out and has displays of the tools that were used. It has been curated by Jane Rees who is President of the Tools and Trades History Society, an educational charity founded in 1983 to further the knowledge and understanding of hand tools and how they were used.
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Norman Matthews
Paintings of Local Life and more...
The paintings on display will be by local Artist Norman Matthews who has recreated some happy memories from his youth ... Playtime at Clandown school , waiting for the racing pigeons return and swimming in the brook amongst others. The museum have used its archives to complement these occasions with photographs and information on these events.
Do you remember the flying circus, or are you in the school photograph? Come and find out.
Opens 6 June until 2 September
A member of the Bath Society of Artists, Norman continues working today and is currently providing art work for a large multi-national company as well as book illustrations plus his own work which features in many local collections
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Know Your Place
Until 24th April the museum is hosting the Know Your Place project which has brought a large interactive cube to the museum. There are touch screens to access extraordinary images from archives, museums and heritage collections across the West of England, to give a unique insight into the history of the places where we live, work and visit every day.
Click here for more details
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SCL Update
A lot has been going on in the development of the Museum over the last few weeks.
The Bier
Visitors will immediately notice that the Bier has been moved to a new location adjacent to the mine, a much more appropriate place as it now depicts the death of a coal miner with a simple bunch of flowers on the coffin, no posh wreath, also a very poignant touch is a small bunch of bluebells on the Bier as if put there at the last minute by the child of the poor miner in the coffin.
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The Co-Op Bread Van
Now the Bier has been moved the Bread Van has been re-positioned so that, once it has been refurbished, we can put a horse between the shafts.
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Old and New Radstock!
How appropriate! Students from Bath College here in Radstock are constructing the walls of James McMurtrie's Parlour, a new permanent display in Radstock Museum.
James' real parlour was in his home, South Hill House, a nine bedroom property now demolished, previously sited on the grounds where Bath College, Radstock stands today. So the museum is delighted that students from Bath College, where the parlour was once situated, have been the ones helping to reconstruct his parlour at the museum.
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The Mine
COMING SOON……………Virtual Reality Coal-mining Experience
Students from Bath College are developing an exciting trip down into the coal mine complete with cage ride, pit ponies, rock falls, miners working and more. Bryn Hawkins, former mine employee is advising the students on what it was really like in the mines to try to make the experience as authentic as possible. Bryn is pictured here enjoying the 360 degree experience. Look out for more news on this as it develops over the summer.
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Forge Video
A team from the Museum went to Radford Stables to film the Farrier re-shoeing a horse; this film will be edited together with filming done at the Glastonbury Blacksmith recently and will be shown in the Blacksmith's Shop in due course.
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Volcano Batch Competition
Could your photo or artwork be on a new postcard for our local area?
Somerset Coalfield Life at Radstock Museum is launching a photography and artwork competition. We are looking for images of our iconic Volcano Coal Tip at Old Mills Paulton. Enter as an adult over 16 or as a child under 16. Closing date 31 May, full details of rules etc are on our website.
The two winning images (one from each age group) will be published on new postcards to represent our area.
EVERYONE’S A WINNER: ALL of your entries will be displayed in an exhibition at the museum in June (dates to be confirmed, see www.radstockmuseum.co.uk in due course for details).
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Talks
Bygone Days and Science in Radstock talks are now over until the autumn. A huge thank you to everyone who supported them during the 2016/17 season.
In Science in Radstock we heard fascinating talks about Nailsea Glassworks, Now See Ear, Biologics, Ink Jet Printing, the New Solar System and the History and Mystery of Maps. Regular volunteers, Clem, Jill and Catherine, welcomed two new ‘helping hands’, Richard and Peter, to the organising team and the talks go from strength to strength. A full programme of talks is already arranged for Autumn 2017 and brief titles of these will soon be published on the Museum website What's On page. http://radstockmuseum.co.uk/whats-on/
The next Science in Radstock talk will be on September 19th 2017 and if you would like to receive direct email reminders a few days before each talk please send Jill a request on sinrteam@gmail.com .
The highlight of Bygone Days was a talk and associated film about the S&D Railway given by Andrew Linham that was so popular that it had to be repeated in a larger venue to meet the huge demand.
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Spring Sale
As spring seems to have arrived we are having a spring sale with reduced prices on selected books:
The Railways: Nation, Network and People by Simon Bradley. Was £25 now £10. 2 hardback copies in stock.
The Trains Now Departed by Michael Williams. Was £20 now £10. 1 hardback copy in stock.
Nelson: The New Letters Ed. Clive White. Was £25 now £10. 2 hardback copies in stock.
The People's War Ed. Alan Thomas. Was £5 now £2.50. Lots of hardback copies in stock.
Roman Somerset by Peter Leach. Was £8.95 now £5.00
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Books
We have a selection of books which are linked to our latest exhibition "Working with Hand Tools...the traditional way".
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Five Arches Journal
Spring Edition
The Spring edition of Five Arches is now on sale in the shop priced £4:00.
It is once again interesting reading, including a look back at 60 years of the Duke of Edinburgh Award, a ramble down a disused railway, the history of the Harptrees, memories of Shoscombe School, the Ancient Order of Druids, Camerton Court, William Frederick Carpenter, and the 'removal of nuisances' from Clutton Poor Law Union.
Our editor would like to say a special thank you to Robert Attwood for coming to the rescue when she broke her elbow at the start of the year. He gave up his free time to assist with the layout and preparation, enabling Issue 87 to go out on schedule.
With the continued diversity of material, Five Arches remains excellent value for money, despite an increase in prices due to increases in postal charges and production costs. Copies of the Spring issue, as well as back issues and subscriptions, are available from the Museum Shop.
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Clock Tower Update
The clock tower is now scaffolded which has allowed access to the bell hammer mechanism and the clock hands. In addition it also enables the paintwork to be refreshed and a leak in the tower to be repaired.
Symon Boyd from Timsbury Clocks has now removed the hands, the hand drive mechanisms, the bell, the hammer return spring and the strike mechanism and taken all the pieces requiring restoration to his workshop. He found that apart from needing a very good clean up, the strike return spring needed replacing, one of the two trunnions on the bell strike shaft had sheared off and the bearings had suffered some minor damage. He is now working to repair the bell strike shaft, is cleaning all the mechanisms and repainting where appropriate. A new spring is being made by J.R. Goold Vintage Steam Restorations Ltd at their works in Camerton.
We hope that the bell may be able to strike again by the beginning of May, more details and updates will be on our website.
At the same time as this is going on, one of our volunteers, Bob Taylor, has been working on the tower paintwork and sorting out the leak which has been causing water ingress into the new Research Rom below the clock tower.
Our fund raising efforts continue so that we can carry out the rest of the work as soon as possible; if you wish to make a donation please visit our website where you can also sign up to receive regular news by e mail of what is happening on this project and in the Museum itself.
Having the tower scaffolded has also enabled us to take some unusual photos of central Radstock.
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New Acquisition - Help Required
Holcombe Christmas Crackers
Between 1945 and the early 1950s part of the old Holcombe Brewery was taken over by a business called Wendy Crackers, that made Christmas crackers and children's toys.
A couple of weeks ago a tea-chest full of Christmas cracker materials from a loft in Coleford was offered to the museum. It includes a range of different decorated papers, card tubes, snaps, lots of different novelties and paper hats, and sheets of cut-out stickers which go on the outsides of the crackers. The crackers were all hand made using aluminium tube formers, several of which are also in the box.
The collection has to be sorted and catalogued and will add another strand to our archives of local industrial history. If you have any knowledge of Wendy Crackers and its employees or have any of its products then please e mail research@radstockmuseum.co.uk .
It is hoped that a small exhibition can be staged later in the year - probably in the run up to Christmas!
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Mining Memories Film
Last month in partnership with the Victoria Hall we showed to a capacity audience the film “SOMERSET MINING MEMORIES” produced by Radstock Museum in 2005 with funding from The Somerset District Miners Welfare Trust and The Local Heritage Initiative. It told the story of the men and women who lived and worked in the Somerset Coalfield.
School Visits
The education team has gone from strength to strength in developing the school visit experience as shown by a few of the pictures below taken recently during a visit by pupils from Longvernal Primary School.
The team is hosting another French School in May which will allow honing off of linguistic skills!
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Back to School in Victorian Times...
Farmborough Goodwill Club members experienced a Victorian Morning at the museum last month enjoying a lesson in the Victorian school room with a very strict Madam, museum volunteer Jenni. Luckily they all escaped the cane!
After the lesson they went down the mine to learn how miners of the 1800s worked in extremely narrow coal seams lying on their sides or backs using picks and shovels. Carting boys dragged putts of coal out from the seam on all fours using the infamous gus-n-crook (a rope waist band with a chain attached which passed between the legs and hooked onto the putt).
They then visited the old Coop shop where the shop assistant, Irene, dressed in Victorian costume served the members carbolic soap for washing themselves, their hair, their clothes and their dishes as well as for cleaning the home.
In the miner’s cottage Penny, dressed as a Victorian housewife explained how hard life was looking after the home and family with often more than 10 children and everything having to be done by hand especially the washing.
For some of the visitors this stirred memories of the 1930s and 40s when life was still much the same as in Victorian day.
If your group or history society would like to book the Victorian experience email info@radstockmuseum.co.uk addressed to Jill Webb Head of the Education Team.
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