Archive conservation staff are to be reunited with an ‘old friend’ with their latest project.

The letters of John Russell in the Eyre-Matcham archive document his career as a naval administrator at Woolwich, then Deptford, as Consul General in Lisbon and Consul in Morocco.

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Mere Museum is celebrating the start of 2011 with their new conservation themed exhibition entitled ‘Preserving the Past for the Future’ and staff from the Wiltshire Council Conservation and Museums Advisory Service teams were privileged to be invited to the opening on 4 January for a sneak preview.

A Gladstone Bag, c.1882

The exhibition shows the range of objects conserved by the Conservation team for the museum over the years with photographs showing the objects before treatment alongside the actual objects after treatment, together with informative panels about the conservation treatments used.

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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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Medieval Open Day

Saturday 25 September

10 am - 4 pm

Please 'read more' to find out which fun and free activities are on offer this year...

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“Hoodies can be Goodies”, “Think Twice, Think Positive”, “Take off your cover”, were just some of the campaign slogans created by Swindon students developing their own campaigns having been inspired by the example of the Suffragettes, Anti-slavery campaign or the campaign to improve Public Health.

At work on the project

Students at St Joseph’s Catholic College learned about the appalling conditions in Swindon in the 1850s and how public health campaigns helped to bring clean water and proper sewers. They then investigated modern day campaigning techniques before developing their own campaigns challenging the media stereotype of teenagers as vandals and criminals. Staff from the History Centre and school governor, Stan Pajak, had the difficult job of judging a winner from the excellent presentations. The students used rap, poems, posters, leaflets and some great slogans to get their message across. The winning slogan was “You tell us not to judge a race, so why would you judge a younger face?”. To find out more, please 'read more'..

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An American journalist once said that a picture is worth a thousand words; very true but only if you know what the picture is showing you. Here at the History Centre we have tens of thousands of photographs, most we can identify but a few are a mystery. Some are really good photographs but their historic value would be much greater if we could identify the places and people.

 Image No. P32082
                 To take a look at the other images, please 'read more'...

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David Light of Hardenhuish School and Samantha Lethaby of Abbeyfield School both spent a week at Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, working for the archive service in July this year. In their own words they describe what they did and what they thought of working here…

What kind of things did you do?

You are most likely to be doing a different job everyday, whether this is helping out with public enquiries downstairs or cataloguing new additions to the extensive archives. (David Light) Read on to find out more....

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