| 2012/3 | Magazine / Spring 2012 | Look out for new textiles on your next visit / The museum's busy Needlework Group continues to meet monthly to carry out a variety of projects. These include: a set of Tudor napkins for the Bayleaf Farmhouse table; a new Tudor outfit so that, there should be at least one costumed interpreter in Winkhurst Tudor kitchen every day; a new quite for the cot in Whittaker's Cottage; a thick cotton mattress stuffed with feathers for the Beeding toll house; linen hand stitched to size and prepared for the window fittings in Poplar Cottage; the first set of bedding completed for Poplar Cottage; two new schoolmistresses' blouses for schools workshop leaders to wear. Many other projects are underway. |
| 2012/3 | Magazine / Spring 2012 | Gardening with the Lazy Housewife / Six period gardens have been created to show the flowers, fruits, herbs and vegetables that would have been grown to meet the needs of ordinary country people through the centuries. During the winter the gardening team have pruned the fruit trees in the orchard and gardens, replaced continuous hurdle fencing and traditional hedgelaying to provide stock-proof barriers. The team has also been working on the herbarium - a collection of plants from around the museum site that have been dried, mounted, labelled and classified systematically to provide a historic plant record. Planning and preparation work has also been carried out and a variety of seeds will be planted, appropriate to the period.
Along with the Interpretation team talks, walks, displays and demonstrations have been planned for the coming year. A Historic Gardens Week, from Saturday 23rd to Friday 29th June is also planned. |
| 2012/3 | Magazine / Spring 2012 | Farming operations 2012 / The museum will again be growing arable crops in the fields to the west of the museum site, below the Pendean Farmhouse paddock. In partnership with Chris Tomkins, three acres of triticale (a tall hybrid of wheat and rye) will be grown. The variety, which was first bred in the late 19th century, is now used extensively for thatching throughout the country. In the same area it is hoped to grow a small area of potatoes, while the remaining acreage will be put down to grass for haymaking. The local variety of wheat, Chidham wheat, will continue to be grown on the field strips next to Bayleaf Farmhouse.
Hops grown in front of the Wealden farmhouse last autumn were successfully brewed into a "Harvest Ale" called "On the Hop" by Ballards Brewery at Rogate. A similar project is planned for this autumn.
The working horses continue to undertake a range of tasks around the site and the Southdown ewes were soon to lamb as the magazine went to press. The Tamworth pigs continue to attract m \\ |
| 2012/3 | Magazine / Spring 2012 | Friends Events for 2012 / Day trip to Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire on Tuesday 15th May. Ticket price |
| 2012/3 | Magazine / Spring 2012 | News from the Armstrong Library / Jo Minns reports that the library team has been very busy incorporating the rest of the Frank Gregory collection into the library catalogue. This job, which is nearly complete, has produced more offerings for the next Book Sale as well as for the library shelves. Bernadine Saunders has retired after more than 16 years as a library volunteer. Carol Brinson has joined the team. |
| 2012/3 | Magazine / Spring 2012 | The Landmark Trust / If the Weald and Downland Museum represents the very last chance of survival for historic buildings at risk, the Landmark Trust is the penultimate bulwark against their loss. Landmark was founded in the 106-s to prevent the irretrievable loss of Britain's historic buildings. However, the buildings Landmark takes on are given a new start not as exhibits but as living, breathing buildings, rescued, painstakingly restored and given new life and purpose as self-catering holiday lets, available to all. Today there are almost 200 Landmarks across England, Scotland and Wales, four in Italy and a few in France. Landmark's work is entirely complementary to that of the museum. At Singleton, visitors can study a unique collection of vernacular buildings; with Landmark, everyone can, for a time, actually live in such buildings. |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Interpreting Tindalls Cottage / Historic context and explanation of how Tindalls is being interpreted. |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Work starts on textiles for Tindalls Cottage / Museum's Needlework Group starting work on male and female clothing and bedding for Tindalls Cottage. Historic Clothing Project information. More men volunteering to wear historic clothing - featured in 'Be a Museum Detective' booklet for children. Clothing for 'Tudor Monastery Farm' film. Specialist visitor groups and talks: Northbrook College, Oxford branch of Guild of Spinners, Weavers & Dyers, Southern Counties Costume Society AGM. Work on loom continues. Weaving own fabric, with help of Val Conway from local branch of Guild of Spinners, Weavers & Dyers. |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Encouraging wildflowers on the museum site / Museum committed to caring for downland site in environmentally friendly way. Museum's wildflower meadow next to Poplar Cottage flowered and was scythed in August by Mark Allery (award-winning English scyther). Dominance of crested dog's-tail grass.
Working with South Downs National Park Authority, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew/Wakehurst Place and the Weald Meadows Partnership on a downland restoration project on the north-facing bank between Hambrook Barn and Tindalls Cottage. |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Volunteers develop the museum's working smithy / Making items needed for projects on and off site, including: two brackets to hold magnifying glasses so that finger joints on oak laths used to construct the Downland Gridshell can be inspected by visitors; cart hooks for carts and wagons in collection; new hoops to add to collection of traditional toys; fire irns for the Toll House from Upper Beeding; gates for the Toll House and the smithy yard; set of roehead nails for Chichester Canal Basin Society for lock gates; wroguht-ion window frame for Tindalls Cottage.
Four years ago the British Association of Blacksmith Artists held a 'forge-in' at the museum - set of iron tree markers made have been relocated to a clearing in the woodlands so that they can be seen together, helping explain working woodland.
Smithy, from Southwater, West Sussex, typical of many smithies of the region. Given to museum in 1970 by Mr Piper. |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Monument Fellowship programme helps museum retain knowledge / Application to the Museums Association Monument Fellowship. Purpose: to enable retired collections specialists to share unrecorded collections knowledge with former colleagues, their successors and the wider museum community. Funding from the Monument Trust. With Roger Champion, shared detailed knowledge with Joe Thompson: recorded conversations, photographs and sketches assembled into digital output. Technical details and comparative significance of the buildings and methods used in their conservation. Museum founder Dr Roy Armstrong's photographs are key part of archive on the buildings. Include files of negatives - now indexed. For the future: CDs and DVDs on which the conversations, videos, photos and sketches will be digitally recorded; seminars with the museum's staff and volunteers. RH reported to conference of the European Association of Open Air Museums in Bavaria in August and proposed a working seminar for members on the subject \\ |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Great day out at the Rare Breeds Show / Several hundred cattle, sheep, pigs, goats and poultry of numerous breeds. Also fleeces and handspun products from local producers. |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Who runs the museum? / Museum run by Trustees who are the governing body of the charity, responsible for controlling its management and administration and for appointing its director (or chief executive). Volunteers, receiving no payment, who work together as a team with collective responsibility . Have legal responsibilities and duties of prudence and care. Currently 17 Trustee, who meet at least twice a year, and appoint an Executive Board of seven members who meet at least every other month with the Museum Director. Figureheads: three vice presidents: Duke of Richmond; Lord Lieutenant Susan Pyper; Diana Zeuner. Income: self-funding |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Charcoal Burners' Camp embedded in museum's seasonal work / New charcoal burner's hut made by volunteer Sarah Ridley. Will be tarred over by Rural Interpreter Jon Roberts. To be dismantled Sept/Oct and rebuilt May. Traditional earth burn to run in May as part of charcoal burning course and for museum's own use. Second burn will be held at the end of the summer. |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | In Brief: Completely floored; Detective work; Museum's medicinal plants to be analysed / Completely Floored: reconstruction of Tindalls Cottage provided challenge - laying a beaten loam floor - recipe of two parts loam to one part kibbled chalk, with sharp sand and water, tamped to create 'polished' surface. Exercise led to similar at Poplar Cottage. Presenters of 'Tudor Monastery Farm' relayed floor as part of demonstration, with ash to provide additional bidning and instead of water, soured milk supplied by Lady Elizabeth Benson's farm.
Detective Work: ' Be A Museum Detective' - new fee booklet for children.
Museum's Medicinal Plants to be Analysed: Plants used historically as medicines to be selected from the museum's gardens by for analysis at the University of Surrey. Gathered by Museum Gardener Carlotta Holt and volunteer Alison Cottell, Senior Tutor in Microbiology at the university. Modern day assays will be performed in the university's bioscience and chemistry laboratories by students. |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Celebrating Sussex! / Brand new event: "Sussex Day" held in Juneon St Richard's Day. Highlighted musuem's building exhibits from Sussex, including first change to view progres on Tindalls Cotage. Also: Brighton Mummers performing their 'Medieval Romp'; South Down Folks Folk Singers; Sussex Folk Orchestra; Chanctonbury and Ditchling morris dancing groups; 'Gully', Brighton & Hove Albion football club mascot; stoolball; marbles, which has been played in Tinsley Green for centuries; opportunity to taste Sussex food, and discover Sussex crafts; range of history and local interest groups. NB: also:Museum Library open all day with display. |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Lining out the Rafters: 1300 to 1900 AD, in the Weald & Downland / Summary of presentation on new research into roof geometry at 'Raising the Roof: A Thousand Years of Timber Roofs', Museum's 2012 conference. |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | In Brief: Museum Playing a Part in Horsemanship Training; Reviving South Downs Folk Songs / Museum Playing Part in Horsemanship Training: Museum has teamed up with Norfolk rural life museum, Gressenhall Farm & Workhouse, to discuss collaboration over demonstration of farming operations for visitors and keeping alive horsemanship skills. Involved: Gressenhall farm officer Richard Dalton, museum's horseman Mark Buxton, Museum Director Richard Pailthorpe, Diana Zeuner editor of Heavy Horse world magazine and museum vice president.
Reviving South Downs Folk Songs: Project to teach traditional songs of the South Downs to new generation of singer culminated in launch of CD at the museum. 'South Downs Songs' reorded at Burpham Village Hall by singers who attended workshops run by folk trio Emily and the Hares for the South Downs Society. |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | The Plumbers Museum Trust Workshop / Example of craftsmanship of the leadworker has been installed in garden of Longport. Made by plumbers who demonstrate regularly in the Plumbers Museum based in Court Barn, it is a replica of a special lead planter made to mark HM The Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012 by Master Plumber Terry Fillary (correct spelling). Plumbers who work at the museum regularly, Phil Mead, Gordon Cooper, John Giles and Peter Cheesman, created replica in Court Barn. Plumbers Museum run by Plumbers Museum Trust, established by the Worshipful Company of Plumbers. NB: their library is also at the Museum, in the Reference Library in the hall from Crawley. |
| 2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Filming 'Tudor Monastery Farm' / Following success of BBC Two's living history series 'Victorian', 'Edwardian' and 'Wartime' Farm', museum chosen for 'Tudor Monastery Farm'. Archaeologist Peter Ginn and historian Ruth Goodman front six-part series with archaeologist Tom Pinfold. Sheep farming, harvesting, fashioning printing printing press, building Tudor clock. Intricacies of social structure - relationships between lay wrkforce and inner sanctum, the wider world and the whole monastic community. Filmed by Lion TV. Co-ordinated by Julie Aalen.
Win a 'Tudor Monastery Farm' book competition. Guided tours planned. |
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