SPORTING CUPS AND JUBILEE MUGS AT THE MUSEUM
Community News March 2012
SPORTING CUPS AND JUBILEE MUGS AT THE MUSEUM
There’s been a really encouraging response to our idea of an exhibition on Halesworth’s Sporting Past to mark the Olympics this summer. We’ve had so many generous offers of material to display and so many suggestions about Halesworth’s Sporting Heroes, past and present. It’s certainly not too late to get in touch about either. We’d still be grateful for items, recollections or suggestions to make this a really good show. Call Vic Gray.
We’re also encouraged by a grant from Suffolk County Council’s ‘Suffolk Celebrates’ fund to help us do this properly.
Meanwhile, 2012 isn’t just the year of the Olympics. Our Curator, Mike Fordham is at work putting together a display on Halesworth’s past celebrations of Coronations and Jubilees, showing how the town and the villages have pulled out all the stops in the past to celebrate in style. This will be ready for the Museum’s summer opening at the beginning of May.
A forgotten Halesworth hero of a different sort has re-emerged from the mist in the shape of Thomas Fella, an Elizabethan resident of the town who spent his spare hours copying characters and details from images in books of the time and turning them into a fantastic commonplace book full of local flavour and colour, a real glimpse into Suffolk life four hundred years ago. The book was sold to an American library in the 19th century but has now been rediscovered by Dr John Blatchly and Martin Sanford of Ipswich. When it is published this summer it will attract a great deal of attention as a new historical find of some importance and fascination. The Museum has been lucky to arrange a talk by the editors to mark the launch of this volume in The Cut on June 26th. It should be a truly fascinating evening.
Meanwhile the Museum has reopened after its winter closure and is now open Tuesday and Thursday, 10.00-12.30.