2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Collections / Maintenance & Conservation:
Watersfield Stable - external weatherboarding replaced with new elm. Hand water pump and stone trough removed.
Gypsy Caravan - work now complete - stewarded by Mark Everington, son of donor Mrs Everington.
Sussex Wagon - blue boat wagon withdrawn from Wiston Wagon shed for extensive restoration. One of Museum's Sussex Wagons chosen for this year's harvest. Repainted.
Other Curatorial Work:
Open Store - in addition to lunch-time tours, Artefact Store opened on other day-long occasions usually co-inciding with special event. West end entrance made more inviting.
Scythe Survey - collection given boost by interest and work of Mark Allery (pole lathe turner, demonstrator, scything tutor and national English scythe champion). Now have much improved detail descriptions and identifications and discovery of particularly rare example manufactured by Fussells of Somerset.
New Acquisitions:
Petworth Shoes - from Petworth Cottage Museum, had been concealed within \\ |
2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Farming - Sun and warmth provides good harvest / Maris Widgeon wheat crop for thatching straw, barley grown for winter bedding yielded c450 bales, double last year's.
Hillside between Hambrook Barn and Tindalls Cottage cut for hay by horseman Mark Buxton. Site Manager Nick Conway produced 200 bales and 29 round bales of haylage from other areas of the site making us self-sufficient in feed for the winter months.
Bayleaf orchard produced bumper crop of apples.
Small crop of hops harvested from the museum gardens for the 'Harvest Ale' "On the Hop" brewed by Ballards Brewery at Rogate and available for purchase at the Autumn Countryside Show. Hop garden at Tindalls Cottage will be planted for next year.
Pea crop planted in Bayleaf field strips by the 'Tudor Monastery Farm' presenters and harvested as part of the programme
Grateful to Jonathan Fulford of Bartholomews of Chichester and his parents-in-aw Dr and Mrs Edwards who have successfully grown a trial plot of Chidham wheat to replenish our seed s \\ |
2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | People / Welcome to three new staff members (with outlines of backgrounds):
Simon Bridge - Retail Manager; Phyllis Gorrian (better known as Phil) - Volunteer Administrator; Ed Downs - Adult Learning Assistant
Obituaries (with outline of their contribution to the museum):
Ray Hurley; Bob Borley; Leon van Ewijk; Ian Constantinides; Howard Stenning; Patrick Garland; Marie Felicia Hett |
2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | School Services / Wide range of Tudor, Victorian, craft or building-based workshops; Arts Award - Discover in a day! - activity pack for teachers; Shakespeare Week; New History Gang; |
2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | In Brief - Challenging conditions for the gardening team! / Carlotta Hlolt reports: Cold weather, deer damage, but germination eventually good and managed to bring in a good harvest. |
2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Historic Buildings - New roofs for two buildings / Hambrook Barn and house from Walderton re-thatched following |
2013/10 | Magazine / Autumn 2013 | Historic Gardens Week focuses on gardens through the centuries / Museum's six period gardens representing five centuries of gardening. Visitors could compare herbs, vegetables and flowers, chat to the team, see the herbarium and take part in guided tours, talks and demonstrations. |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | Tindalls Cottage - a special preview is planned in June / Tindalls Cottage is settling in to its new home at the museum following the successful "Raising the Frame" weekend in 2012. After the frame was completed attention turned to the staircase and floor boarding. Work began on the chimney and brickwork and the tiling. Volunteer blacksmiths made the ironmongery for the windows and doors. Friends of the Museum's fundraising initiative raised |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | The museum on Facebook / The story about a museum leaflet from 1976 generated lots of comment - it cost only 45p to come into the museum, VAT was 8%, our telephone number was Singleton 348 and we warned people that bank holidays were busy.
Photographer Russell Cobb has sent some wonderful pictures of interpreters in replica clothing. One picture was very popular on Facebook at the beginning of the year.
Nick, the Gritter and the BBC was also a hit. Nick Conway, our site manager was interviewed by BBC Sussex about the salt spreader which had been bought with a grant from West Sussex County Council for the villages of Singleton, West Dean and the museum. |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | From Field to Flour - via an auction / Last autumn the museum teamed up with Baird's Farm to offer a special prize for the Climping Village Ball's auction of promises, helping Baird's Farm harvest an acre of wheat, then bringing 25kg to the museum's Lurgashall Watermill for milling, reading for baking in Baird's Farm Shop ovens. Julie and Angus McIntyre, the winners, arrived with their twins, Jack and Olivia, with their sack of grain. David Meares and Bob Potts, volunteer millers, explained how the mill worked and how the grain was turned into wholemeal flour. The family saw their grain being hoisted to the top floor and poured into the hopper. The mill gradually ran up to speed and the family felt the first of their flour. After a couple of hours touring the museum they returned to see the last of their flour being weighed and bagged. They returned home with copies of the recipe book and great ideas for using the flour. |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | Fund-raising dinner / The Friends will be holding a major fund-raising event on 7th September, "Dinner with Greg Wallace". This black tie event will be all about food, with MasterChef co-host Gregg Wallace as guest speaker. The dinner will be held in the Jerwood Space of the Downland Gridshell. Tickets are |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | Friends' vital contribution / The Friends of the Museum makes a significant financial contribution to the museum's day-to-day operation and a variety of projects and activities. Last year's grants amounted to |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | Medicine and Mortality 1300-1900 - 21/22 September / This weekend will focus on domestic rituals around human health, sickness, medicine and death through the ages. Demonstrations will take place, including by the Tudor Group, herbal expert Christina Stapley, the Workshipful Company of Plumbers and our domestic interpretation and gardening teams will ensure plenty of interest throughout the museum. |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | Tindall's Cottage - the repair works / Repairing the structural timber frame of Tindall's Cottage has been a wonderful and challenging experience. Carpentry in a frame is usually fairly consistent and recognisable but not in Tindalls! The frame contains 294 timbers, but not the staves, stairs or floorboards. Two hundred (80%) are original Tindalls timbers. However, only eight of these appear to have been new when the cottage was built. The other 192 were re-used. The frame of the cottage has an "Alice in Wonderland" quality - nothing is quite what it seems at first sight. One cannot help feeling admiration for the carpenter's skilful work. |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | What was life like for the people who lived in the museum's houses? / A new book about some of the musem's most important exhibits has been published: "Houses of the Weald and Downland: People and Houses of South-east England c 1300-1900 has been written by the museum's Social Historian, Danae Tankard. Following research between October 2005 and April 2008, Danae offers a unique insight into the social, economic and living conditions of the periods in which the eight houses featured were built, as well as revealing details about their architecture and construction. |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | Enjoy lunch at "The Moveable Feast" / With plans for a new refectory by the lake being developed, the museum is to upgrade its current refreshment facilities with two striking temporary structures for the 2013 season. These will comprise two circular shelters with fine views to the lake and the market squaqre, close to the site of the current caf |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | Olympic legacy for museum / Wildflower turf, specially grown for the Olympic Park and used in Danny Boyle's opening ceremyon last year has been donated to the museum. Staff and volunteers helped lay the 200 sqare meters of turf next to Poplar Cottage. The turf includes Yellow Rattle, Self-heal, Bird's-foot-trefoil, and Crested Dogs-tail, all native flowers of Sussex. |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | Sussex Day - 16 June / A new event for the museum will be Sussex Day on 16th June, when we will be celebrating all things Sussex. The day will focus on all that is unique and special about the county, with talks on sussex subjects such as the hall from Crawley, crafts and folk music and Sussex sports such as stoolball. Stands in the Gridshell will be held by Sussex organisations and domestic life demonstrations will be centred on our buildings from Sussex. |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | Tindalls - the people / When my great grandfather, Albert Alfred Tindall, died in 1931 at the age of 91, he was the head of the largest medical publishing house in Britain and proprietor of several magazines.
John Tindall was probably the ancestor of all those who can trace their ancestry to the south-east corner of England as Tindall is a Tyneside name. By 1748 John Tindall was the tenant of the cottage and a parcel of land about 26 acres in Ticehurst. At least four of his children lived to adulthood, including the one who inherited the tenancy of the small holding. They went on to beget families and by the early 1800s Tindalls and Tindall-connections-by-marriage were recorded in the parishes around. |
2013/3 | Magazine / Spring 2013 | In Brief / The museum is a lead partner in a project called Illuminating the south Downs. Working with West Sussex Museums, the South Downs National Park authority, Creative West Sussex and West Sussex County Council, the project has two elements. Firstly to identify and review the museums and collections located in West Sussex that are relevant ot the South Downs National Park, and secondly, to commission creative responses to the collections to engage new audiences. |
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