York Museums Trust Blog

We were lucky enough to be given a tour yesterday by Roger Tomlin, an expert from Oxford University. His specialist subject for the day was Roman inscriptions in the Yorkshire Museum, literally shining a new light on the many words in the Roman Gallery.

Personally, the greatest revelation was this stone, which I’d never paid any attention to before. It turns out to be the best piece of Roman inscription in the country and to be an important part of York’s story, marking a major gate of the Roman fortress.

You can now see it on the History of York website here.

Forrest Gump was so obviously wrong…life is nothing like a box of chocolates…life is, quite clearly, a series of opportunities to eat biscuits.  Biscuits tend to carry with them a penalty, such as attendance at a meeting or a promise (if I eat this biscuit I promise to do at least an hours work before I have another) and some turn out to be a little stale, or what you thought were chocolate chips are actually currants.  Then there’s the fact that they often come accompanied by a hot beverage, thus adding a whole layer of metaphorical complexity that boxes of chocolate simply do not have.  See? So much more like life…

Today is the first time our refurbished historic  Hospitium building has been used in anger.  Well probably not in anger – the first clients are the Museums Association who are holding a conference on collections information management.

We have a horse in the gallery. Stubb’s life-size painting of Whistlejacket arrived last Thursday and to general sighs of relief, fitted through the door (with only millimetres to spare.)

He was wrapped in pinky paper – like the Jumblies feet – and arrived in an enormous, articulated lorry. It transpires that the lorry itself is not quite big enough to accommodate him, so he travels in a sort of horse-box attached to the back!

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.

She seems constantly surprised by how the people of York are attracted to her fame (we do have celebrities in Yorkshire, but the home-grown famous are tainted by too few degrees of separation – heavens, everyone in Leeds knows someone who went to school with a Kaiser Chief and if you experience afternoon tea in Betty’s without glimpsing Alan Bennet, I’d demand a refund.) She’s exotic and glamorous (being American) and defiantly surprising, as she’s here by choice, not the happenstance of birth.  So the people come, as moths to a flame (not that Tracy would ever burn anyone, not even on an off day.)  Last Tuesday they came in hoards, like their Viking ancestors. As we set out her desk with her handwritten ‘the writer is in’ sign, in a corner of the gallery, and she sat with her pen poised, I felt I had led a lamb to the slaughter.  Would she survive?  The crowd were bemused and buzzed like angry bees “When is she going to speak?” “Well,” I suggested, “I’m sure she’ll speak if you speak to her..”  and they buzzed some more.  She did survive…and the Viking bees seemed pleased to have met her.

Well, that was one of the most bizarre (but most fun) afternoons I have ever had! Today families were given the chance to try and protect two eggs – one was to be launched in a rocket, the other was to be thrown off the roof of the musem. And, of course, the aim of the game was to see if your eggs had survived.

For me the fun was to be had because I was one of the lucky members of staff who was able to go up to the roof of the Yorkshire Museum and throw eggs off it. It was really odd to be up there for the first time (it’s a little difficult to get to, and of course only employees with good reason to are allowed on the roof), to look down on people, and to be flinging away carefully prepared eggs. We had to throw the eggs far enough for them to stay away from the edge of the building and land on a target, but at the same time hope that a child wouldn’t be really disappointed if their egg hit too hard. One egg hadn’t been so well secured in a polystyrene cup and came flying out of it about half way down, smashing right into the middle of the target. The parachute gently followed it and came fluttering down all by itself… 

 We’re doing it all again tomorrow. I’m sure I can find the time to have fun throwing eggs off the roof  help out my colleagues with an important activity!

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