From April 2012 museums in Wiltshire will be able to call upon the services provided by the Wiltshire Council Conservation and Museums Advisory Service (CMAS).

Based at the History Centre in Chippenham the team will be providing advice, support and training on all aspects of running a museum. This includes activities such as recruiting volunteers, cataloguing and conserving historic objects, mounting displays and writing funding applications.

Some members of the team...

Many people do not realise that none of the museums in Wiltshire (all 53 of them!) are run by the council. They are all either independent trusts or charities, or operated by town councils.

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We get a great many visitors passing through our doors, honing in on those invaluable parish registers, wills, non-conformist records etc. Some venture further, taking a look at what else the History Centre has to offer, but for many, little do they realise that they are missing out on some essential information – the contextual evidence that brings life to those ancestors they are searching so long and hard to find.

The Wiltshire Local Studies Collection is a unique resource available at the History Centre which can do just that. I have searched the shelves to give you just a taste of what is on offer if you have a little extra time to look whilst you are here. If not, many of our books are available to loan via your local library, all you need to do is put in a request.

Memoirs

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The Archives Conservation team recently held a number of workshops for museum curators and volunteers on the care of paper and archive collections.

This was very much untried territory for the team, Paul Smith and Mervyn Grist, but was in response to requests for assistance from museums around the county. Three days (one in September and two in October) were arranged and numbers limited to six delegates per session. The programme for the sessions was devised by Paul Smith, Senior Archives Conservator. Staff and volunteers from Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes, Dewey, Cricklade, Athelstan, Mere and Salisbury Art Collections attended.

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If you have been to any museums in Wiltshire you will know that they hold within them a great variety of objects telling the stories of the people and places of the county.

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Whilst Wiltshire’s museums are full of the varied and interesting objects that define the county’s character, there are also clues within their collections to local people who have had a broader, historical impact.

I noticed this myself when I came across an image on the Chippenham Museum database http://www.chippenham.gov.uk/tourist-information/local-attractions/chippenham-museum--heritage-centre.aspx, which showed a silver and gilt hand bell, surmounted by a male figure representing industry and the handle showing the Trades Union Congress armorial emblem. A handsome piece of town silverware - but on closer inspection, the piece is inscribed ‘Presented to Florence Hancock CBE….September 1948’.

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With the eyes of the world’s media currently focussed on the momentous events unfolding in Egypt I thought it would be interesting to see how this country is represented in Wiltshire’s museum collections.

Museums across the county exist to preserve and display the history of Wiltshire and its people as seen through objects, images and documents.

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I’m Victoria Barlow and I’m the County Conservation and Museums Manager. Before moving to Wiltshire three months ago, I worked as Collections Manager for a maritime museum in Kent and have worked in museums for 15 years. During my first few weeks in post I visited all of the 18 museums that we work with and I was struck not only by the welcome I received but by the professionalism and enthusiasm of everyone working in Wiltshire’s museums.

Volunteer Mike Asbury of Pewsey Museum and Photographer Simon Harris collect an award at the recent Voluntary and Community Sector Awards. Copyright Wiltshire Council.

Many of our museums are run by volunteers and even those which do have excellent professional staff, rely on volunteers to some extent to run their services. You will have heard the government talking a lot about volunteers recently and the concept of The Big Society. Here in Wiltshire we have been doing that since the 1970s! Wiltshire Council doesn’t run a museum but instead we have a Museums Advisory Service and a team of Conservators who work with museums small and large across the county, supporting and helping them to look after their collections and meet professional standards. 

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The registers and records of South Marston parish were recently deposited in the History Centre. Although the impact of this is somewhat lessened by the fact that we have had microfiche copies of the registers pre 1900 for over twenty years, nevertheless it is significant because it leaves only one Wiltshire parish, Ludgershall, outside the fold of the History Centre, quite an achievement in securing the permanent preservation of these vital records. Along with the registers, which go up to 1991, are records including a church rate book, 1847-1857, which is a useful source of names of parishioners at the end of the period of compulsory rating for Anglican churches.

 
A 'Defence of the Realm' register entry found in the Winterslow parish registers. It shows the Wiltshire returns of 1803.

If you are interested in parish registers, you might like to look at a new publication by our very own Steve Hobbs: “Gleanings from Wiltshire parish registers”, which forms volume 63 in the excellent series of Wiltshire Record Society publications, available for use in the History Centre. Steve has uncovered a wealth of information about life in Wiltshire which goes beyond the bare facts of baptisms, marriages and burials. For example, did you know that the 1695 assessments of tax on births, marriages and burials provided the first national census? Very few of the full assessments survive, but the register of Donhead St Mary includes the full asessment, and records the status of all parishioners and amount of tax due. The population of that parish in 1695 is stated as 814. To find out more, please 'read more'...

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In October 2009 Castle Combe Museum was awarded Accredited status by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.

This is an excellent achievement for the volunteers who run the museum and means they are meeting nationally agreed standards for how a good museum should be operated. This is the same standard that all museums across the country work to so is a great success for Castle Combe. To continue, please 'read more'...

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Hello, I am Terry Bracher, Archives and Local Studies Manager here at the History Centre.  Browsing through part of photographic collection I came across a photo of elephants bathing in the River Avon in Chippenham town centre in 1906. The elephants were part of a travelling circus and the Avon at Chippenham clearly provided a welcome break for the elephants as they walked to the venue for their next performance. Now I have always had an interest in historical curiosities and this led me to ask colleagues if they had come across any other curious animal related tales throughout Wiltshire, with the aim of creating our top ten animal tales, so long as they followed a simple rule - the animals could not be farm animals (unless they did something especially curious) and they had to have been see alive and well at some point in Wiltshire’s history.

The Elephants in Chippenham, 1906

But let’s start with animals that do not count. I would have liked to include the dancing bears of Lacock. They were a familiar site in the nineteenth century, being led into the village along with musicians and other entertainers. Looking through the book “Chippenham and Lacock in Old Photographs” I was astonished to see a picture of a dancing bear in the late 1930’s. Sadly, on closer inspection this was a photo of the 1938 pageant with a Mr Bob Vines in convincing pose playing the part of the bear, together with his “handler” his brother Eric Vines. This could be a whole new category in itself. 'Read more' to find out about some dramatic events involving animals in Wiltshire....

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