York Museums Trust Blog

Our inscription to the famous Roman Ninth Legion has now been put into place in the Central Hall of the Yorkshire Museum, which reopens on 1 August, 2010. 

The mysterious Ninth Legion has been the subject of many stories after its soldiers apparently disappeared after travelling to Scotland to fight the Picts. Our inscription is the last dated record of them and dates from AD 107-8. It was found in York and celebrates the building of the south east gateway to the city’s fortress. The skill of the letter cutter suggests he was probably imperially trained.

The inscription has been positioned above a Roman gateway, which will hold a screen giving a sneak preview film of our six citizens of Eboracum – Roman York. These various characters feature later on in a trip around the museum and their stories have been created using evidence from skeletal remains found in York and the surrounding area. Here’s a picture of the inscription and the gateway taken from above:

Downstairs the Medieval Gallery is nearly ready for our array of Anglian, Viking and Medieval treasures to move in. Now that the space is clear, the windows exposed and the floor covered, the sunlight really does light up the arches of the ruined St Mary’s Abbe

Find out more about these fascinating, legendary fossils.
Whitby Snakestone
The folklore of snakestones in the Whitby area dates back to at least the 16th Century. In “Britannia”, 1586, William Camden records stones from Whitby which “if you break them you find within stony serpents, wreathed up in circles, but generally without heads”.
Legend has it that when the abbey at Whitby was built it was infested with snakes. The Abbess of the time, St Hilda turned them into stone at which point they lost their heads. In later years local fossil dealers sometimes restored their heads by carving them onto ammonites found on the shore. This is one such example. In this case the ammonite is Hildoceras bifrons, the scientific name in memory of St Hilda.

In store, Geology Collection, Yorkshire Museum

We are relaunching ‘Collections Snapshot’. We will regularly look at the story behind interesting objects from our collections. Our first object is:

Victoria Cross

In store, Castle Museum, Military History Collection

This was awarded to Lieutenant Humphrey Osbaldston Brooke Firman, Royal Navy, for bravery after his death on 24th April 1916.  On this night, in Mesopotamia, he lead an attempt to bring supplies to the force. However, they were brought under heavy artillery fire at Kut-el-Amara. Lieutenant Firman and several of his crew from the ‘SS Julnar’ were killed, while the survivors and supplies were captured.
Recently, on 24th April 2008, a Service of Dedication took place for a memorial plaque commemorating Lieutenant Firman, at the War Memorial in New Malden. We were unable to lend the medal for the ceremony but we provided large scale copies of an image of the medal. This was much appreciated by the Memorial Committee.

Painters, decorators, shopfitters – they’re all hard at work now preparing our Yorkshire Museum galleries to be filled with fascinating things to see once we reopen on 1 August.

Here’s three pictures taken yesterday showing:
1. painting the room which will hold our dinosaur footprint trackway (you can see it at the far end of the room surrounded by spotlights);
2. a frame going up to hold three huge sea reptile fossils - the ichthyosaur, the plesiosaur and the pliosaur;
3. a lone Roman fresco already up on the wall as fitters get to work on part of the Roman York gallery.

After a few weeks of building work (and there’s still a little bit of work left to do!) our new shop and cafe have opened at York Castle Museum

They’re both now next to the entrance area looking out across the Eye of York towards Clifford’s Tower.

The shop has lots of new stock including vintage-style enamelware, retro style souvenirs and nostalgic gifts featuring old-style adverts.

The cafe has some gorgeous-looking cakes on sale as well as sandwiches, soup and hot meals, and healthy snacks for hungry kids.

If you’re passing, why not pop in and have a look – there’s no admission charge to get into the shop and cafe area (and remember admission is free for York residents anyway!).