ACTIVITIES
Preserving the past At a time when some local museums are fighting for survival, Sue Dobson discovers why they’re a resource worth supporting
Oundle Museum
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Gordon Boswell Romany Museum
eople have been living in and around Oundle since Neolithic times and Oundle Museum has exhibits to prove it. There are reminders of how many Roman sites there are in surrounding villages and of Iron Age farmsteads along the Glapthorn Road. The first written reference to Oundle came in 709 on the death of St Wilfred in his monastery. A model of the pre-1825 Market Place is complete with horses and cows. Nostalgic photographs of village railway stations form the backdrop for a scale model of Oundle station. The reminiscences Oundle of an evacuee Museum in Ashton are accompanied by a small collection of World War II memorabilia. One display explores the town’s brewing and malting days. There were three breweries in the 19th century and a fourth, Smith’s, was in business from 1775 to 1962. Another tells of important charities with names and legacies that echo still. A town map covers the floor of the second room, where a life-like model of a pharmacist with his pill-making equipment sits alongside a General Store, its shelves laden with jars of sweets, tobacco tins and all sorts of cleaning materials. Then you’re into the room that takes on a different theme each year. For 2011, it’s Bandages, Brandy and Benevolence. There are some very strange cures detailed in this exploration of medical and social care, like an ointment of pigeon droppings and watercress to treat baldness and gout, and seeing some of the medical, optical and dental equipment you’ll be glad to be living in the 21st century! The museum is housed in the old Courthouse and upstairs there’s a remand cell, complete with model prisoner. Outside, the Barn is filled with farming implements. Oundle Museum may be small, but you could spend hours here browsing through folders and files and following a history trail on well-presented wall displays, all expertly researched.
Model village
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The Thorney Heritage Museum chronicles the life and times of this fen island village from the medieval building of a great Benedictine abbey with rich monastic lands. With the 17th century comes the story of the drainage of the fens and the Huguenot settlers who farmed the land. In the 1840’s, the wealthy landowning Dukes
NENE VALLEY LIVING August 2011
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