York Museums Trust Blog

Our new website seems to have been in development for years and years, which is perhaps appropriate for a history site.

But at last its public! have a look: www.historyofyork.org.uk

The idea is that the site will continue to develop for many more years – so if you have any bright ideas for it, let us know.

One of the big bonuses of working in a museum is that you accidentally come across all sorts of interesting stuff and get to see it really close up.

This morning I was over at the Castle Museum in the new Sixties gallery and found Josie unwrapping an original Mary Quant mini-dress from the ‘Ginger’ range. Note the upside-down ‘i’ – very Sixties.

The culture of Museums using their assets to make extra cash is now well established in Britain. Some of the most successful ventures have been in venue hire.

These two photos were both taken on Friday afternoon in York – the first shows the work going on in York Museum Trust’s own medieval building – the Hospitium – and the second is at the National Railway Museum.

The Hospitium is to become the new centre of the Trust’s Venues business in April and the NRM have recently extended their conference facilities.  This will be the first time in 600 years or so that the Hospitium has proper plumbing – you can see some of it in the middle of the floor in the picture!

This is one of the corner towers of the York Abbey walls this morning. It’s normally the entrance to a riverside walk by Museum Gardens.

I’ve had my head buried in the History of York development site for the last month or so, trying to get enough material on there to justify going public.

I’ve learned all sorts of interesting stuff in the process, but my favourite nugget of info so far has to be this: Viking Male Grooming

The latest from our curatorial bulletins, this is from the Military Historian, Keith:

This chocolate tin was presented by the Mayor and Sheriff of York to a soldier from York for Christmas 1914. This act of generosity, presenting all servicemen from York with a Christmas gift, was helped by the Sheriff being Oscar Rowntree, of the chocolate firm. What makes this tin very special is that the recipient resisted temptation and kept the contents intact. To the servicemen this was a very welcome gift. Most were not regular soldiers or sailors having joined the forces in the patriotic fervour of war breaking out in August. Many were away from their home city for the first time.

The realities of modern warfare were beginning to reveal themselves – such as static trench warfare, mass artillery bombardments, submarine warfare and use of aeroplanes. The promise of being ‘home by Christmas’ was not happening. The arrival of the gift was a real boost. This is shown in letters to the Mayor’s office now held in the Local History Section of York Library. Many recipients wrote to thank the Mayor and Sheriff for their gift, some wrote asking for more! Once the true nature and scale of the war was realised such gestures became rare. There was no similar gift in 1915.

I went down to the Yorkshire Museum today and was in for a big surprise!

All these fantastic demonstrations were by modern day professionals who used their specialist knowledge, together with information from the Museum, to try to recreate lost skills.

A link to more info on the: Community Archaeology Project.

2008 is going to be an exciting year for York Castle Museum – its the museum’s 70th anniversary, there’ll be a major new exhibition – The Sixties – and three new ‘get-involved’ spaces (the Kitchen, Wardrobe and Armoury) to complement the Victorian Street.

Visitors have told us they find the museum friendly, relaxed, authentic and even an emotional experience (they also made a few less complimentary comments, but that’s another story).

We’ve been scratching our heads as to how to summarise all this good stuff in a single strapline for the museum.

Even my wife Maria has got the bug – last night’s best was ‘Welcome to Your Past’, or ‘Welcome to Our Past’.

Comments – and ideas – are very welcome.

This is from our internal ‘Collections Snapshot’ by Katherine:

Sometimes objects which don’t make the best photographs are really exciting. This Roman glass vessel is around 2000 years old, made of really thin and delicate glass and yet is virtually complete. It’s unusually large for this type of vessel, and we’re not sure what it was used for – perhaps for cosmetics, or oil, or even offerings. After being placed into a grave, it was not disturbed until the railway station was built at the end of the 19th century.

York St John University is a relative youngster in York’s cityscape – it’s only been around since 1841. I was still really pleased yesterday when they agreed to join in with our History of York internet project. The university will soon be uploading pictures and info about the various stages of its history to the new site.