Hello, my name is Terry Bracher, Archives and Local Studies Manager and along with my colleague Laurel Miller, who is our Heritage Education Officer, one of my favourite jobs is to help co-ordinate one of the History Centre’s big annual events, which is our Open Day. It takes place on Saturday 1st October from 10am – 4pm. Last year we had over a thousand people visit the History Centre at our Open Day participating in a range of family fun activities and this year looks like being as popular.

The Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre

Of course, a lot of planning goes into the event, but did you know that we start almost once the previous Open Day has ended? First we have to review the activities that took place and look at your wonderful and informative feedback to see what was successful and if anything worked less well, so that we can make improvements the following year.

The next step is to decide the theme of the Open Day; previous years have seen us look at Tudor and Medieval Wiltshire. This year, when we heard that Wootton Bassett is to receive a royal charter, we were inspired to find out about Wiltshire’s royal connections. We were impressed by what we found. Wiltshire had royal castles, palaces and forests, 2 royal weddings, a royal burial and a royal saint. There was also a local dastardly plot to kidnap a king and 2 of the regicides who signed the death warrant of King Charles I lived in Wiltshire … and much more. So we decided our theme this year should be ‘Royal Wiltshire.’

Once we have a theme we start thinking about the activities, especially those provided by external groups that have to be booked early in the year. We are pleased to announce that this year visitors can watch a demonstration of great skill by the medieval re-enactment group Deeds of Arms, as the knights of Clarendon palace challenge the knights of the captured French king in combat. Kids can have a go at being a knight and see if they can beat the French king’s champion and find out all about the knights’ armour from a real armourer. Returning by popular demand, but with a different twist (there will now be two of them and playing different instruments), are our musicians. You will be able to enjoy performances of courtly Tudor music played on original instruments, just as Henry VIII did when he visited Wolf Hall in the Savernake forest. Visitors can also have a go at playing a Psaltery, and other Tudor instruments or join in with Henry VIII’s favourite courtly dance.

Henry VIII at our Tudor Open Day

Childrens’ activities always form an important part of the day and the Wiltshire Scrapstore are also returning following their success last year, to provide lots of fun craft activities, including making your own crown. Other fun activities include coin making and an x-ray game brought to you by our award winning Conservation Service.  Children can also enter the costume competition by dressing as a king or princess.

For those of you who want to take a more stately procession around the History Centre, we always make sure there are lots on offer from all our heritage teams.  For example, we will be displaying Henry VIII’s marriage deed with Jane Seymour and other rare royal documents from our Archives, including letters signed by Queen Victoria and Elizabeth I and a sketch by King George V when he was a young boy.

 
The marriage deed of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour

Join the county archaeology team to discover the fascinating history of the Royal palace of Clarendon near Salisbury, which was used by three English kings and as the prison for the French and Scottish kings during the 100 years war and Old Sarum, where William the Conqueror gathered all British nobles to recognise him as their king.  There is also the annual opportunity to have a peek behind the scenes and see one of our huge strong rooms, one of seven rooms where we keep our archives to the highest environmental standards. You can visit our state-of-the-art conservation labs, seeing the conservators at work and finding out how we conserve objects such as ancient coins and about the work that is done to preserve our royal documents; while our Museums Advisory team are hatching a cunning plan to feature an historic royal top-trumps game and a display of royal memorabilia, plus lots of bunting to remind us of our street parties past!

To make sure our visitors see everything and have the best possible visit,  we have to produce floor plans showing the location of activities and signposting (remember our site is the size of 5 football pitches - though we are not going to make you walk around all of it!). There is also lots of furniture to be moved and other preparation for the day in a big logistical exercise, which often goes late into the Friday evening before the big event. If that was not enough, there is the small matter of some of the staff being measured up and fitted for historic costumes by our colleague and experienced dresser, Joy Rutter, as we prepare to take on the persona of some characters with royal connections from Wiltshire’s past. So much still to do, but it is all worth it when we witness just how many people come along and tell us that they have had a fantastic time.

So don’t forget, Open Day starts at 10 am of Saturday 1^st October and we will be going through to 5 pm, be sure not to miss it!

If you are hoping to come along and do some family or local history research that day, you are welcome to use our microfiche and film, computers and library. However, for obvious reasons original documents for research will not be available. It will also be quite noisy, but we hope you will also take the opportunity to pop in on some of our wonderful activities.

 
If you have enjoyed this article, the following entries may also be of interest:

Meet the Middle Ages

So, Just What Do our Visitors Come to See?

The King of Limbs

History Centre on Tour