Grant awarded for new Reception area

The first part of the new Reception area.

A grant of £750 has been received from the Burnthouse Farm Wind Farm Community Benefit Fund to improve the Reception area at Whittlesey Museum. For the first time the Museum will have a dedicated Reception desk, allowing volunteers to sell tickets and answer visitor enquiries more efficiently. The revamp will also include an upgraded shop area in the same room, and allow posters to be put up explaining the range of services offered by the museum and sister organisations.

Museum After Dark

The clocks changing was celebrated with our first Museum After Dark event, in which families with school aged children explored the museum by torchlight searching for spooky objects from the past. Our new exhibition area was also open, showing the temporary exhibition "Witch Hunt" about the witchfinder Matthew Hopkins.

999 Emergency!

The museum held a "999 Emergency" event for preschoolers and primary aged children to tie in with the current Response and Rescue exhibition. Activities included playdoh challenges, dressing up, toy cars and a teddy bear's hospital area as well as mask making, fire mark design and a quiz for the older children.

New Museum Quiz

Whittlesey Museum has a new quiz for children.

The quiz has been written by Amy, the 12 year old grand-daughter of regular museum volunteer Sandra.
Amy lives in Wisbech but says that she has "come to love Whittlesey Museum through visiting my grandparents".

Amy's quiz has ten questions about items on display in the museum.

Bier Shed Completed

After an eighteen-month journey, involving two grants (Thank-you, Museums in Cambridgeshire!) and a planning application, the new display shed in the museum back yard is now installed, painted inside and out, roofed, ventilated, double-floored (with planks recycled from a nearby business) and ready to be filled.

It will hold an original funeral bier used to carry coffins to church for burial, and information about Death in the Fens.

200 Photographs added to museum archive

Mysterious Masked Man arrives...

New Cases in Room 5

Two sides of Room 5 have now been fitted out with a sweep of new display cases thanks to the generosity of the Burnthouse Farm Wind Farm Community Benefit Fund.

These cases will display items relating to traditional ways of living off the fens, the draining of Whittlesea Mere in 1851 and loosely cover the period from Victorian Whittlesey up until the start of WW1.

The cases form part of an overall redisplay to produce a local history timeline across Rooms 5 and 6.

Successful Straw Bear

Toys on Display

December has seen Santa's elves working hard at the Museum to unpack the bulk of the Toys & Games collection from store and transfer it across to a new display in cases in Room 2 (previously used for domestic items).

Previously-hidden gems include a game of 'Trench Football' from World War One, a Victorian pull-along elephant toy found on King's Dyke and a variety of space-age items from the 1960s.

Museum Instagram Launched

Whittlesey Museum joins the smartphone age with the launch of a new museum Instagram feed: https://www.instagram.com/whittleseymuseum/

The image-based social network is already used by many UK museums and allows users to build and share a personal photo album of their own pictures.

The Whittlesey Museum feed specialises in photographs of the local area, museum objects and things that are happening at the museum.

Wind Farm Grant Awarded

This month we are feeling grateful to the Burnthouse Farm Wind Farm Community Benefit Fund, a charitable fund managed by Cambridgeshire Community Foundation, who have just granted Whittlesey Museum £825 towards the cost of new shelving for Room 5! Updates will follow as the shelving is installed and filled up as part of our ongoing timeline of local history. We hope to be able to bring quite a few objects out of our stores as a result of this grant and cover topics such as The Draining of Whittlesey Mere, Traditional Fenland Life, Victorian Whittlesey and World War One.

Surprise archaeology at Whittlesey Museum!

Brushing away some loose soil immediately outside the back door of our replica Forge has exposed a lovely section of original brick floor from the time when the back buildings of the old Town Hall used to be a caretaker's cottage. 
We hope to be able to keep the bricks visible now to share them with the public.

Whittlesey Festival 2015

 A good day was had by all at the Whittlesey Festival 2015, with unseasonably sunny weather.  More than 200 visitors took advantage of free entry to the Museum to meet some real museum objects, get their faces painted and see parts of the 2016 Straw Bear being built to the accompaniment of some live music.

Full Accreditation for Whittlesey Museum

We are very proud today at Whittlesey Museum because we have just had our Full Accreditation renewed by the Arts Council for another three years!

The Accreditation Scheme sets nationally agreed standards for UK museums. To qualify, museums must meet standards on how they are managed, for the services they offer, and on how they care for collections.

Museum Shop Revamp!

The Museum Shop area has been revamped this week, with several exciting new products including Hedingham Fair greetings cards, museum badges and pencils and even a new Whittlesey Museum exclusive Straw Bear Dress-Up toy (only 80p!)...

Of course, you can still buy the previous range of local history books and leaflets including the ever-popular Millennium Memories of Whittlesey series, now only £1 per booklet.

Local Mangle Restored

After much work over the winter, volunteers have just completed the restoration of a large local mangle which will now be taking up a permanent home in the museum yard.

The mangle was made in Whittlesea during the 19th century and is decorated with ornate ironwork designs including suns and crowns.The pale green colour of the new paintwork was especially mixed to represent the original colour of the mangle, matched against flakes of the original paint.

Summer Exhibition celebrates 200th anniversary of Waterloo

Did you know that local celebrity Sir Harry Smith fought at the Battle of Waterloo during the early part of his career, or that his young wife Juana was told that he had died there and rode 60 miles over the battlefield searching for his body before the pair were reunited?

This summer's exhibition at Whittlesey Museum commemorates the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo on 18th June using first-hand accounts of the battle written by Sir Harry Smith and Juana Smith. Come and find out for yourself about the role that the Prussian army played on the day, the looting of teeth from the dying to use in dentistry at home and Europe's first prisoner of war camp at Norman Cross in Peterborough.

Redisplay of Room 6

Regular visitors may have noticed gradual changes happening to the displays in Room 6, formerly the 'Information Room' at the back of Whittlesey Museum.

The museum reference materials have been moved into Room 1 and the shelves and writing desk that went with them have gone, allowing a rearrangement of the display cabinets to make a lot more space in the room.
Wednesday work team volunteers have since been hard at work repainting (ably demonstrated by our youngest volunteer, pictured) and installing new visitor attractions such as a touch-table, family activity boxes and a DVD screen.

When the redisplay is completed later this year Room 6 will form the first half of a timeline of Whittlesey's past, beginning when the clay in the brick pits was being laid down under the Jurassic sea and stretching up to 'Cromwell Country' and the Civil War.
The second half of the timeline, covering the period from the first wholesale fen drainage up to World War Two, will be installed in Room 5 at a later date.

Volunteer Social - 2.30pm Sunday 8th March

Whittlesey Museum is holding a Volunteer Social on Sunday, from 2.30pm at the museum. If you currently volunteer, are interested in volunteering in the future or just want to find out about what is going on at the museum, please come along for tea and biscuits and a short presentation before moving on to a local pub!