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WHERE’S YOUR FLARES?

Community News February 2013

WHERE’S YOUR FLARES?

Have you still got an Abba song running through your head?  Do you still get hot under the collar about the 3-Day Week or the Winter of Discontent?

Then you remember the 1970s and you may have something to contribute to this year’s Big Museum Venture: ‘Halesworth in the 1970s’. We’re going to try to recapture a bit of the spirit of that time and awaken a lot of slumbering memories. Do you remember where you were at the Queen’s Silver Jubilee? Can you remember the death of Elvis? Or the day our first woman Prime Minister arrived at No. 10? Were you one of the lucky ones who got the first of the newly invented VCRs? Or a Sony Walkman? Even, perhaps, one of those brick-sized mobile phones?

Or maybe you were still playing with your Space Hopper and wishing you could get a Commodore PET or an Atari for Christmas, play Space Invaders or show off a brand-new digital watch at school. You young-uns can tell us a lot about growing up in the 1970s.

The 70s Project will kick off in earnest in the late summer and run for a year, during which time we’ll be staging 70s events and displays and capturing memories of that hectic decade, both from people who were in the area at the time and from those who have strong recollections of what they were doing elsewhere.

But in the meantime, watch this space and get digging at the back of the bottom drawer for those old flares you’ve never got round to throwing away or those hot pants you can’t quite squeeze into anymore, and especially those photos of you in your platforms or your sideburns. ‘Saturday Night Fever’ is returning to town!

For further details or to take part, contact Vic Gray at the Halesworth and District Museum, 01986 872437, grayvw@globalnet.co.uk

ONWARD AND UPWARD AT THE MUSEUM

Community News January 2013

ONWARD AND UPWARD AT THE MUSEUM

We’ve had our brief pause for turkey and a mince pie and we’re off again, up at the Museum.

2012 left us smiling (perhaps a little wearily). We’d staged an exhibition for the Jubilee and another on Policing in Halesworth – our first winter exhibition. We’d sold out two editions of Mike Fordham’s book on the Blyth Navigation. We’d brought the town together in celebrating Halesworth’s Sporting Past. We’d packed out The Cut for a lecture on the newly discovered ‘Halesworth hero’, Thomas Fella. We’d raised funds, with the help of local people, to buy the fabulous Wissett Bronze Age hoards. We’d found ourselves some terrific new volunteers, doubling the number who are now helping out with all our activities. And, best of all, you’d rewarded us by showing up at our events and contacting us at almost three times the level of the previous year, while many other museums are watching numbers decline.

Now for 2013. Encouraged by your support and enthusiasm, we’re planning two new summer displays in the Museum: one on Toys of Yesteryear, the other on Dairying in the Halesworth area. We’re hoping to launch a series of history talks, open to anyone with an interest in the past. We’re going to publish a new book of Victorian photographs of Halesworth. We plan to put the Wissett Hoard on display once it’s been properly conserved. And, late in the summer we’re going to launch a big new project  on the 1970s, involving us in displaying lots of photographs and objects gathered from local people and interviewing people about local life in the Age of Abba, the 3-Day Week, Evel Knievel, ‘The Good Life’, Flares and Loons. So dust off your platforms, climb aboard your Space Hopper and come and join us. Who says museums are just bones and dust!

LAW AND DISORDER IN HALESWORTH

Community News December 2012

3,000 YEAR OLD TREASURES COMES HOME

December 2012

LAW AND DISORDER IN HALESWORTH

With the future of policing very much in the news at the moment, you might be interested to learn a bit more about how things have been done in the past.

Did you know there was a time when Halesworth had at least four police officers stationed  (and living) in the town? Did you know that for a few brief years, Halesworth had two policing systems operating in the town at the same time? Have you heard of the time when the Riot Act had to be read and troops called out to stop an angry protest march in the town? Do you know which Chief Constable in Suffolk ended up in gaol? Do you know how many different police stations there were in Victorian Halesworth? Can you tell us where all of them were? Or how many of them are still standing?

If you scored poorly in this little quiz, then you might like to brush up your knowledge by calling in on the special exhibition ‘Policing Victorian Halesworth’ which is on at the Halesworth and District Museum in the Railway Station until 15 December. It’s open, free, Tuesdays to Saturdays, between 10.00 and 12.30.

One important focus of the exhibition is a series of exhibits relating to the murder of Police Constable Ebenezer Tye in Chediston Street on 25 November 1862 – exactly 150 years ago. Just 24 years old, Tye had only been stationed in the town 18 months when he was beaten to death while trying to apprehend a burglar. In tribute to him, the Suffolk Police Museum has specially loaned these exhibits, which were carefully preserved after the trial of Tye’s murderer. A century and a half later they are as poignant as ever.

The Museum has usually gone over to its reduced winter hours by now but, for the first time ever and thanks to the willingness of our keen team of volunteers, we are rolling back the winter to mark this anniversary appropriately.

Finally, the Chariman and Trustees of the Museum would like to say a special merry Christmas to all those volunteers and Friends who have made possible one of the most successful years in the history of the Museum, a year in which the number of people visiting the Museum and its exhibitions has nearly trebled! Speaking of which – a very happy Christmas to all of them too!

3,000 YEAR OLD TREASURES COMES HOME.
A HALESWORTH MURDER RECALLED.
PRECIOUS BRONZE AGE FINDS RETURN TO HALESWORTH. 

Community News November 2012

3,000 YEAR OLD TREASURES COMES HOME

By the time this edition of Community News appears, the Wissett Hoard will be back in our part of the world. On 26 October, Museum Curator, Mike Fordham, and Treasurer, Brian Holmes, will at long last collect from the British Museum the two groups of Bronze Age axe heads, spears and rapier blades discovered last year by metal-detectors in a field at Wissett.

All this has been made possible by the generosity of local donors to the Museum’s Save The Hoard Campaign. Once the fifteen objects, all over three thousand years old, have been received at the Museum they will be prepared for the delicate and highly skilled conservation work which will be necessary before they can be displayed in the Museum next year.

There is still a need of further funding to cover the cost of this essential work and if you would like to be associated with the task of ensuring that this precious treasure is preserved for ever for us and for future generations, please get in touch with the Campaign Manager, Brian Howard.

A HALESWORTH MURDER RECALLED

Early on the morning of 25 November 1862 –150 years ago this month – 24-year old Police Constable Ebenezer Tye was positioned in Chediston Street. He was there to keep an eye on a suspected local burglar, John Ducker, who was thought to have been conducting early morning raids on local properties. When Ducker appeared, he was carrying a suspicious-looking bundle and Tye went to question him. There were shouts and then a scuffle broke out and Tye was chased to the reed beds down beside the river at the back of Chediston Street.

Later that morning, when the alarm had been raised after Tye failed to return to the police station, a search was made. His body was found in the river. He had been cudgeled to death. Ducker was subsequently caught, charged and was tried for murder. He was sentenced to death.

To mark this sombre occasion and in honour of P.C. Tye and all his colleagues past and present, who put their own safety at threat in the course of their duties, Halesworth and District Museum will be breaking with its usual tradition of limited winter opening in order to stage, with the collaboration of the Suffolk Police Museum, a small exhibition on policing in Victorian Halesworth. This will feature some of the material associated with the crime described here. The display will run from 27 November to 15 December and will be open from 10.00 – 12.30, from Tuesday to Saturday. Admission is free.

PRESS RELEASE

PRECIOUS BRONZE AGE FINDS RETURN TO HALESWORTH

A precious group of fifteen bronze tools and weapons which lay hidden beneath the ground in Wissett for thousands of years has been returned to the area to form the centrepiece of new displays at the Halesworth and District Museum.

One of the two hoards was discovered last year by enthusiasts using metal detectors in fields around the village and were handed over to local archaeologists for identification. The second hoard was excavated fully by the County Archaeological Team and careful expert examination of the objects has shown them to be over three thousand years old, dating to the Middle Bronze Age (c.1500-1150BC).

Museum Curator Mike Fordham points out that it is most unusual to find two hoards so close together and the evidence, from the identical alloy used in both, is that they are both of the same period. Evidence of Bronze Age people in this area, away from the easier land around the coast and rivers, has so far proved hard to find. “This is certainly the most important local find of its kind for decades,” say Mike.

The Hoards were purchased by the Museum after receiving a grant from the Arts Council and an appeal to local residents for funds to raise the £14,000 needed to buy, conserve and display the objects properly. To date over half the sum has been donated, covering the £4,300 needed to acquire the Hoards and to enable conservation work to start. Brian Howard, the Museum’s Treasurer and Campaign Manager for the Wissett Hoards is still eager to encourage local donations. “Despite such a magnificent response from local people, we still need help to put us in a position to show off this magnificent new material to this and future generations,” he says. Plans include an educational brochure and the production of replicas which can be handled by children as part of the educational programme surrounding the Hoards. Anyone wishing to make a contribution or offer help, should contact Brian Howard.

The Hoards are expected to go on display in the Museum next year.

For further information on the Campaign contact Brian Howard:.

For further information on the Hoard, contact the Museum Curator, Mike Fordham.

NEWS AND THANK’S FROM HALESWORTH MUSEUM

Community News September 2012

NEWS AND THANKS FROM HALESWORTH MUSEUM

It’s a big month for thank yous from the Museum.

First, and most important, the big news this month is that, thanks to the efforts and generosity of local people and several substantial grants, we are now in a position to go ahead with the purchase for the Museum of the two Bronze Age hoards recently unearthed in Wissett. It is going to be really exciting to bring them back to the area. We haven’t finished yet, however. We are still trying to raise enough money to preserve them properly and to put them on display in a way that will bring out their meaning and significance and at the same time be exciting for local people –and in particular local children. So there’s still need for some more local cash if you’re disposed to help. Just contact the Campaign Manager, Brian Howard.

Very many thanks also to everyone who has been to see our exhibition ‘Sporting Halesworth’, which closed on 2 September after its five-week run in the Library. We’ve received many helpful, kind and encouraging comments. Our particular thanks also to the staff at the Library who have been keen to encourage this further link with the Museum.

It’s been a good month for gifts to the Museum. We received a fascinating little book belonging to Gorge Dipson of Westhall, who used it first for his school calculations and then, much later, from 1870, for his farm accounts, giving lots of fine detail about farming at the time in the area. Then we received a beautiful Victorian watch movement bearing the engraved name of the watchmaker, the grandly christened Nelson Wellington Newson, who was a watchmaker at 13 The Thoroughfare, from 1858 to 1902.

Another fine gift was a silver cup awarded in 1931 to Mrs Gwendoline Youngman (née Rumsey) when she won the Hospital Dance Waltz Competition, put on in aid of the Patrick Stead Hospital. It’s yet another reminder of how large a part the Hospital has played in the life of the town, with so many social and sporting events staged over the years in its name.

Finally, don’t forget there’s still time, before the memory fades, to see the Museum’s Jubilee Year exhibition on Halesworth’s past celebrations of royal Jubilees and Coronations. Until the end of September we’re open up at the Station, Tues.-Sat. 10.00-12.30.

HOPES GROW OF SECURING LOCAL TREASURE HOARD. 
 HALESWORTH’S PROUD SPORTING PAST. 

Community News August 2012

HOPES GROW OF SECURING LOCAL TREASURE HOARD

Halesworth and District Museum’s attempt to raise enough funds to save a newly discovered local treasure have got off to a good start. Thanks to a number of generous local donations there is hope that the Museum can prevent the sale and loss to the area of the Wissett Hoards, two groups of Bronze Age axe heads, spears and rapier blades discovered last year by metal-detectors in a field at Wissett, where they had lain for over three thousand years.

The project has received a major boost with the news that the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has recognized the importance of the bid and made a substantial grant of £2,000 towards the cost of securing the treasure for local display. The Museum has plans to make the Hoards the centre of a new local educational initiative around the history of the Blyth Valley before the arrival of the Romans.

Brian Howard, the Museum’s Treasurer and the Rescue Campaign Leader is cautiously optimistic but stresses that more help is needed from the local community before we can be sure that the rescue bid has worked. The deadline for meeting the purchase price is mid-September.

Anyone wishing to make a contribution or offer help, should contact Brian Howard .

HALESWORTH’S PROUD SPORTING PAST

The public response to Halesworth Museum’s appeal for mementoes of Halesworth’s sporting past has been so great that the Museum has had to admit it’s too small to do it justice. “A fantastic effort on the part of the Halesworth community”, is how Halesworth and District Museum Chairman, Brian Holmes describes ‘Sporting Halesworth’ the Museum’s new display which had to be moved to a larger space and opened in the Gallery of Halesworth Library on 27 July, the day of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. The exhibition brings together nearly 200 photographs and objects which have mostly been lent or contributed for the occasion by individuals and clubs in the town.

Made possible by a grant from Suffolk County Council’s ‘Suffolk Celebrates 2012’ fund, the exhibition tells the story of sport in Halesworth, past and present. In the course of preparing the display, some surprising new facts have emerged. Old field names, for example, show that once bull-baiting was practiced in the fields behind Chediston Street and there is a tantalizing glimpse of horse-racing taking place off the Holton Road. The Halesworth Angels Bowls Club can boast of being well over 200 years old and Halesworth Town Football Club is this year celebrating its 125th birthday.

In its section on Halesworth’s Sporting Heroes, the exhibition highlights fourteen townsmen and women who have made their mark at county, national and international level or who have made significant contributions to sport in the town. They include national champions at bowls, darts, swimming, weightlifting, an Olympic race-walker and one World Champion. But, alongside these, there are many reminders of ordinary people enjoying their sport, week in and week out. There are many faces which people will recognize and many memories to be enjoyed.

With all eyes set on the future in the shape of a new Campus Sporting Complex, the exhibition gives the town a chance to look back at previous efforts to provide sporting facilities for the town. Many Halesworth people over many generations have given generously of their time and money to create spaces for people to play and compete in. Sport has brought them together to enjoy themselves and enjoy each other’s company. It has helped bind the town together and it is only right that we should celebrate what they have achieved. It’s a great story and one the town should be proud of in this Olympic year.

The exhibition continues during Library opening hours until 2 September.

For further details, contact: Vic Gray, Publicity Officer, Halesworth and District Museum.

STARTING PISTOL RAISED AT THE MUSEUM

Community News July 2012

STARTING PISTOL RAISED AT THE MUSEUM

It’s ‘On Your Marks’ for the Halesworth and District Museum’s response to the Olympics. ‘Halesworth’s Sporting Past’ will be an exhibition tracing the history of sporting activity in the town over the past two centuries – and a very rich pattern of activities that is proving to be.

The exhibition will open on the same day as the Olympics, Friday 27 July, and will run through to the end of August. It will be staged in the Gallery of Halesworth Library and will be open, free of charge, during Library opening hours.

There are still some notable gaps that the organizers are trying to plug. If you have any photographs taken at the late-lamented swimming pool on Dairy Hill, we’d love to hear from you. Or what about the Squash Courts in the Leisure Centre at the George Maltings? And there is still (but only just!) time to nominate your Halesworth Sporting Hero, but you’ll have to be quick. Contact Vic Gray.

Meanwhile the Museum has had a very busy month. Our stand at the Jubilee Celebrations in St Mary’s Church drew much attention with its account of celebrations past, and helped us play our part in marking the occasion. The lecture on Thomas Fella, the newly discovered Elizabethan draper and writing-master from Halesworth, drew a large and very appreciative audience. Don’t forget, if you couldn’t get there, that the new book of Thomas Fella’s drawings, edited by John Blatchly and Martin Sanford, is now on sale at the Halesworth Bookshop.

 

THE ALTERNATIVE OLYMPICS, HALESWORTH STYLE
THE EARLIEST VIEW OF HALESWORTH

Community News June 2012

THE ALTERNATIVE OLYMPICS, HALESWORTH STYLE

As the Olympic countdown gathers speed, so things are hotting up at the Halesworth and District Museum in preparation for the community exhibition Sporting Halesworth. Over the last few months local groups, clubs and individuals have been co-operating in putting together an intriguing display of photographs, trophies and memorabilia to record the story of how Halesworth has kicked and jumped and run and batted its way through recent centuries. There will be some surprises – and a few good laughs (Halesworth has long shown itself to be good at enjoying itself).

The veil is drawn for the moment over the section called ‘Halesworth’s Sporting Heroes’, but it contains some surprises. We can perhaps lift the corner and reveal one strong contender. Anyone who walked sixty miles in twelve hours, as James Lockwood did two hundred years ago, earning himself the title of the Halesworth Pedestrian, surely deserves a place in the Hall of Fame.

The exhibition will open in the Gallery of Halesworth Library just as the Olympics START at the end of July and will remain open until the end of August.

Meanwhile, while you are still celebrating the Jubilee, spare an hour and come and see how previous generations of Halesworthians have done it in style. Visit the Halesworth and District Museum and take a look at our 2012 exhibition, ‘Halesworth’s Royal Celebrations: 200 Years of Coronations and Jubilees’, open Tuesday to Saturdays until the end of September, free of charge.

THE EARLIEST VIEW OF HALESWORTH

The earliest picture of Halesworth ever discovered has been found while researchers were at work on a new book to be launched in Halesworth later this month.

The picture, of Halesworth windmill, which stood between the present School Lane and Wissett Road, was drawn by a local draper in about 1590, and shows the mill standing on a traditional wooden crosstree structure. The miller can be clearly seen in the window.

The picture is part of a fascinating volume of texts and images by Thomas Fella, which he called his Booke of Divers Devices and Sorts of Pictures. It has been stored in a Washington library for the last eighty years and has now been reproduced complete by Dr John Blatchly of the Suffolk Records Society and Martin Sanford of the Suffolk Biological Records Centre, who explain in their book how Fella found images and texts in the books he had read and had translated them into his own fascinating view of the world around him in Suffolk.

The illustrated talk, which has been supported by the Halesworth and District Museum, will be at 7.30 on Tuesday 26 June at The Cut, admission £3. The book will be available for sale after that date at the Halesworth Bookshop.

A HALESWORTH WORTHY REDISCOVERED. 

Community News May 2012

A HALESWORTH WORTHY REDISCOVERED

A piece of painstaking historical detective work has rescued a distinguished former resident of Halesworth from centuries of undeserved obscurity.

The name Thomas Fella has slipped out of Halesworth’s history but he is suddenly due to re-emerge and become one of the town’s ‘historic notables’. Four hundred years ago he was a local draper and a writing-master. In his spare time he would read whatever books he could find locally and was fascinated by the pictures he found in them. He began to copy them and turn them into his own very personal and very local drawings. Those drawings, bound into what he called his ‘Booke of Divers Devices’, were lost to sight after his death and ended up a hundred years ago in the great Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.

Now, two distinguished Suffolk researchers, Dr John Blatchly, former Headmaster of Ipswich School, and Martin Sanford of the Suffolk Biological Register have pieced together a fascinating story of how Fella found his pictures and turned them into little ‘slices of Suffolk life in Elizabethan times’. Their new book, which reproduces all Falla’s drawings, is to be launched at an illustrated talk in The Cut on Tuesday 26 June at 7.30. Tickets, priced at £3, will be available in May.

A spokesman for the Halesworth and District Museum, which is supporting the launch, said “Fella’s work is something very special , a revelation, even at a national level. He is someone we should be excited about claiming as our own”.

ROYAL AND LOYAL AT HALESWORTH MUSEUM

It’s all gone Royal up at the Museum. With the Jubilee just weeks away, get into the mood with a glance at Halesworth’s celebrations of royal events from days gone by. ‘Halesworth’s Royal Celebrations: 200 Years of Coronations and Jubilees’ is this year’s Museum exhibition and there are some fascinating details to be spotted. At Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1888, tables were laid in the Thoroughfare to seat 1,300 people and among the food laid on was 1,248 lbs of beef and enough beer to give every man three pints and every woman, one and a half (not to mention the pint for each of the children). For the Coronation in 1953, there was a long day of celebration, starting with a service in the Market Place at 10 o’clock, moving on to the judging for the best business, street and house decoration, followed by a carnival and fancy dress competition, with dancing and a confetti battle, and ending with a torchlight procession and fireworks.

Some curiosities have also emerged during curator, Mike Fordham’s, research. On display is the programme for the Coronation celebrations for Edward VII, scheduled for 26 June, 1902. In the event, the Coronation had to be postponed, because Edward was ill. Celebrations eventually took place on 9 August, but the programmes had already been printed and still, to this day, bear the wrong date. Even more of a ‘ghost exhibit’ is the 1937 Coronation mug for Edward VIII – a Coronation which never took place, because of his abdication on 11 December 1936. Too late; the souvenirs had already been produced. Now they are a curious and rare reminder that the best laid plans can still go awry!

The Museum is now open until the end of September, Tuesday to Saturday, 10.00-12.30.

WANTED: SPORT ON FILM

Community News April 2012

WANTED: SPORT ON FILM

Halesworth and district have been enormously supportive in helping the Museum bring together photos, documents, trophies and memorabilia for the exhibition on Halesworth’s Sporting Past and Present, due to open in late July. There will be plenty of pictures and objects to tell the fascinating history of sport in the area – football, bowls, Continue reading “April 2012”