York Museums Trust Blog

This short video gives an exclusive peek at what on earth is going on inside York’s oldest museum. The Yorkshire Museum is having its first total refurbishment since it opened in 1830. As you’ll see, there’s still a bit to do but we are totally committed to reopening on 1 August, Yorkshire Day – this year!

After some delays I am really pleased with the two new digital artworks that we’ve put on the windows of empty shops. One is on Walmgate and the other on Coppergate.

More info is at woo2009

The sunlight is streaming in through newly-exposed windows all around the Yorkshire Museum on this sunny day in York.

Over the last week, coverings have been removed from the windows in the old Abbey Gallery, which will become our new gallery Medieval York – The Power and the Glory, exposing views across to the ruins outside in the Museum Gardens.

The scaffolding has gone from the Central Hall and new wrought iron  panels have been put in place around the balcony with the glass behind them reflecting back the light coming through the ceiling windows.

Meanwhile, the Four Seasons Mosaic has been taken down from the staircase wall ready to be reassembled on the floor of the Roman York – Meet the People of the Empire.

And outside our new hoarding decorated with artwork of star objects from the museum tells passing pedestrians and picnic-ers how many more weeks it is until opening.

Next week, the installation of the exhibitions begins…

The refurbishment of the Yorkshire Museum has reached its half-way point with the completion of the dismantling part of the job - with only 136 days to go until opening day on 1 August!

Museum manager Helen Young, who is co-ordinating on-site operations, says the next stage will see the start of plastering, decorating, flooring and electrical work.

Then the really exciting bit begins when the exhibition designers start their work installing the new galleries later in the Spring.

One of the most striking moments of the dismantling process was when a wall was exposed which had held our huge ichthyosaur fossil.

When a stretch of panelling was pulled down the shape of the giant sea monster could be clearly seen on the wall. The fossil had been taken down from the wall some years earlier and is due to go back on display when we re-open in August  (see earlier blog).

In the meantime technician Geoff Hutchinson and his assistant Roger Weal have been carefully bricking up the wall so it can be replastered and redecorated to form part of the new Extinct gallery.

The current exhibition of Yorkshire Museum treasures at the British Museum got a mention in Parliament yesterday.

York’s MP Hugh Bayley encouraged others to get down to the exhibition in London - or even better to travel to York to see the collection of star objects when the Yorkshire Museum re-opens in August.

Here’s how the exchange was reported in Hansard - the daily record of everything said in the Houses of Parliament.

Hugh Bayley: My right hon. Friend was in York last month, and perhaps he knows that, at the British Museum at the moment, there is an exhibition of some of the greatest treasures from Yorkshire, including the Middleham Jewel, the Coppergate Helmet and the Ormside Bowl. Will the Minister encourage members of the public, particularly Londoners, to go to the British Museum to see what makes York so special, perhaps as a taster to encourage them to go north in the summer and visit the real thing in Yorkshire?

The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Margaret Hodge): I am delighted that the temporary closure of the Yorkshire Museum has made it possible for those jewels in our crown to be exhibited in a room in the British Museum. I encourage everybody to go and see them. The partnership between national and regional museums is hugely important in ensuring that all the country’s wealth of artefacts are enjoyed by many more people. It is this Government who, through a renaissance in the regions, have made that partnership possible. That is why it is enormously important that we continue to fund that programme.

Click here for more information about Treasures from Medieval York, the exhibition at the British Museum which runs until 27 June.

Our curators Isla Gladstone and Stuart Ogilvy have been hard at work piecing together the 100-or-so sections of a giant ichthyosaur fossil in preparation for the re-opening of the Yorkshire Museum.

The massive sea creature, more than 20 feet or six metres long, was a predator in the seas over North Yorkshire during the time of the dinosaurs.
Our ichthyosaur is one of the biggest in Britain and its remains were found in Jurassic rocks near Whitby on the Yorkshire Coast. It is very rare to find one as well-preserved and complete as this one.
Isla and Stuart had to work out exactly how much space the huge fossil would take up and how it should be mounted to display it to its best effect in our new gallery, Extinct – A Way of Life.
Each piece of the huge jigsaw fossil been numbered by curators before them and each will be put back into place yet again when it goes on show.
Before then, the pieces will be sent away to be cleaned up and restored so the impact of this huge beast on visitors is as dramatic as possible. This would have been a beast you would not wanted to have encountered if you were a little fish swimming through the waters of Jurassic Whitby…

Sherri Steel unearths some archive recipes for using up old bread, which are set to be recreated in York Castle Museum’s working kitchen.

Recipe book from about 1930

Crumbs! It’s amazing the amount of food that can be created from a few slices of stale old bread…

I’ve been researching old recipes for some historic cookery demonstrations at the Castle Museum in March (Click here for details).

Avoiding waste does seem to be a topical subject at the moment and many of the recipes I found date from the times of rationing.

Cooking with stale bread didn’t just happen in times of austerity though, and it has been used for many things – toast, puddings, food for invalids. Breadcrumbs were often used in Roman and medieval recipes – a sage stuffing appears in a Roman recipe for baked dormouse!

Here’s some of the recipes we’ll be recreating:

Tart for an Ember Day

There were many recipes for Ember Day tarts. An Ember Day was one of the many days in the year when the church forbade the eating of meat.

This is from The Forme of Cury, c1390, a cookbook compiled around 1390 by the master-cooks of King Richard II:

Tart in ymber day: take and parboile onynons; presse out the water & hewe hem smale; take brede & bray it in a mortar, and temper it up with ayren; do perto butter, ineon, spice and salt and corans & a ltel sugar with powdor douce, and bake it in a trap,& serve it forth.

Which when translated means: Take and parboil onions; press out the water and chop them small; take bread and grind it in a mortar, and mix it with eggs; add butter to this, and saffron, salt, currents and a little sugar with sweet powder; bake it in a pie shell (or oven dish) and serve it forth.

Bread Pudding

Puddings also use up stale bread e.g. summer pudding or the traditional bread pudding.

This recipe uses breadcrumbs and is from The House-keeper’s Pocket-book, and Compleat Family Cook, by Mrs Sarah Harrison, 6^th edition, 1755.

To a pint of Cream put in a Quarter of a Pound of Butter, set it on the Fire, and keep it stirring; the Butter being melted, put in as much grated Manchet as will make it pretty light, a Nutmeg, or something else, and as much Sugar as you please, three or four Eggs, and a little Salt; mix all well together, butter a dish, put it in, and bake it half an Hour.

Toast sandwiches

And finally, here is an example of toast being used to feed invalids, in the belief it was easier on the stomach than freshly-baked bread.

This recipe is from Housekeeping Book, Edited by Mary Jewry, c.1890.

Ingredients: Thin cold toast, thin slices of bread and butter, pepper and salt to taste. Mode: Place a very thin piece of cold toast between 2 slices of thin bread-and-butter in the form of a sandwich, adding a seasoning of pepper and salt. This sandwich may be varied by adding a little pulled meat, or very fine slices of cold meat to the toast, and in any of these forms will be found very tempting to the appetite of an invalid.

Here’s a glimpse of some of the Yorkshire Museum’s galleries before and after our building work began…

Work is well underway on transforming the  museum in time for our re-opening on 1 August, 2010, when we’ll have five fantastic new galleries.

For those familiar with the building, the difference is already striking. Not only have all the cases and displays gone, but internal walls have been torn down and covers taken off hidden windows, letting in daylight and giving the place a feeling of being much more spacious.

Behind-the-scenes shots of a press event at the British Museum.  It was the launch of the new exhibition ‘Treasures From Medieval York: England’s Other Capital’

All of the treasures are from our own Yorkshire Museum collection.  It’s the first time the BM has displayed another museum’s collection in this way.  Very exciting.

Victoria Adams, a newly-arrived archaeologist at the Yorkshire Museum, describes what it was like to be on the scene when a skeleton was found by builders…

It is claimed that you can’t dig a hole in York without disturbing archaeology, and that certainly seemed true recently when human remains were unearthed beneath the foundations of the Yorkshire Museum.

Contractors were excavating a drain as part of the museum redevelopments, when they uncovered part of a human jawbone and cranium.  A watching brief was in place, so archaeologists quickly came on the scene to record the exact location and relative position of the bones. The remains were then removed to a safe location, allowing the contractors to continue work.

I was asked along to ‘hold the end of the tape-measure’ and accurately plot the find-site, for what we thought was just a few pieces of bone. Excavating a bit lower, more of the skull was unearthed, then the ball of the hip bone amongst the skull fragments, so we concluded that the skeleton was disarticulated, or jumbled up.  Lower still though we found the arms, ribs, and spinal column all in situ, with a large Victorian pipe cutting across where the pelvis and legs should have been. It appears that the historical builders were somewhat unconscientious, and on discovering human bones just threw them out of the way!

The skeleton may be that of a medieval Christian, as it was deliberately laid out to face east in the eventuality of waking up on Judgement Day. If so, he or she is likely to be associated with St Mary’s Abbey, the ruins of which surround and continue under the museum.

However to add to the intrigue, large fragments of Roman ceramics were found immediately above and below the bones. These may have been disturbed when the grave was dug in medieval times. Or this may be Roman grave, Christian or otherwise!

An osteoarchaeologist is currently examining the bones to determine age, gender and any other information about the individual’s life and death.  If the pathology is interesting then they may be carbon14 tested, to accurately determine the age of the bones. Eventually the skeleton will be respectfully reburied.

Does the Yorkshire Museum have any other skeletons hidden in the water-closet?! Quite probably, as many people were buried in the church and grounds of the medieval abbey.  Excavation destroys archaeological contexts, and analytical processes are continually developing, so it is better to leave sites undisturbed if possible.

So yes, it is quite likely that more bodies will come to light in the future. That’s certainly something to think about as you eat your picnic in the Museum Gardens.