Extract from Newsletter - November 2008

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'Ayrax' 2008

“Will you write something about your E.U. funded trip to Slovenia for the newsletter?” asks Julie, that delightful whirlwind of office administration.

“Er, er, er” I reply “I’m not much good at ‘serious’”. (tell you what though, I’d be pretty good at whirlwind!)

“Well, don’t do ‘serious’ then,” she replies.

Don’t do ‘serious’! I can’t think of anything more serious than the E.U!

Even my favourite comedian, the late Mr Thomas Cooper (him of the Turkish fez) I doubt could make a joke about the E.U.

The Grandfather had a fez, you know, used to wear it sometimes, miserable old toe rag. (We now know the meaning of the expression ‘toe rag’ – any suggestions? Julie)

On one occasion I borrowed it to play air raid wardens with my sister, Peg. When you are young and innocent and full of imaginative thoughts there’s no problem with a red Turkish fez becoming an air raid warden’s tin helmet, especially when your sister sticks a ‘W’ made of green silver paper from a pre-war Christmas wrapper, on the front. (That’s something you can’t get nowadays, green silver paper or a pre-war Christmas come to that.)

With me in charge the rescue of civilians went according to plan, the culmination of which was the sounding of the “all clear” and the emergence of Richie Gratton and Ronnie Weller from the air raid shelter, namely Mrs Agate’s dustbin draped and lined with sacks emblazoned with the words “Burgh Heath Corn Stores, Not to be used for improper purposes.” I am confident that Richie and Ronnie’s behaviour in the shelter was exemplary!

My elder brother Alan, not convinced that my helmet was fit for the purpose confirmed his theories by hitting me over the head with his cricket bat, the impact of which was barely absorbed by the stuffing of newspaper in the fez to stop it falling over my ears. Sister Peg being very enthusiastic and attired head to foot in Red Cross uniform was able to administer first aid to one of the afore-mentioned ears, now rather red and thick, the consequence of the return to the miserable toe rag of a flat-pack fez!

I seem to be digressing and getting away from Slovenia, but I’m really trying not to be too ‘serious’.

Robert phoned. “How would you like an EU funded all expenses paid trip to Slovenia?”

“What for?”

“To look at some ayrax.”

“Ayrax?”

“Not ayrax, hayracks.”

“Oh, hayracks.”

“Yes hayracks, but not as we know them.”

I have a picture or two, which I am sure that the whirlwind can reproduce with perfect clarity to satisfy even the most critical reader. (Some hope!)

Quite right Robert, they are not as we know them. Slovenian hayracks are buildings, have in your mind something approximately the size of Poplar Cottage, timber framed of soft wood, mostly Red Larch, and those pictured are of the late 19C. Whilst the cattle are in the Alpine pastures during the summer months, 3 crops of hay are cut from the lower meadows. The hay is not left in the open to dry as in the UK: it is too valuable to risk spoiling by the wet weather – no hay means no feed for the cattle during the winter when they return to the lower meadows in the autumn. The hay is cut and left for a couple of days to wither before being hung like washing on the bars of the hay racks. After drying it is then stored in the loft above, the empty hayracks are then ready to receive the next cut.

Prince Charles can take full responsibility for this trip. Off he pops to Slovenia about 6 years ago (by invitation) and being the heritage conscious gentleman that he is, he became enthralled with hayracks and concerned for their future due to inevitable decay and the ever-changing agricultural techniques world wide. So it was that on his return to the UK he was in receipt of a dismantled hay rack as a gift (unwrapped, green silver paper would have been nice!) However, not all Slovenians were delighted about this dilution of their heritage and wished to see them preserved and not posted abroad. So as things developed, Britain and Slovenia being EU partners, the Prince’s Trust was approached as the first step in (what to me anyway) in a long and tedious battle to acquire EU funding through the Leonardo Da Vinci Programme for the repair and conservation of these buildings as an aid to increased awareness of national culture, tourism and education.

This was in effect a reconnaissance trip and the first step on the road of fund raising. First step pays for this trip, second step application if successful raises £25,000, third step raises £300,00.00.Our happy band consisted of Colin, a Shropshire conservation officer, Glyn, a landscape archaeologist, Robert, a structural engineer and wood technologist, and myself, whom you can describe as you think fit. The area and hayracks concerned were in Studor in the Triglav National Park, an area of beautiful alpine meadows, mountains and lakes.

We had meetings with EU officials, government representatives of Culture, Education and Tourism as well as discussions in schools, colleges and village communities. Prince Charles seems very popular in Slovenia, the sun shines out of his, er “thingy” at perhaps a more intense degree of radiation than is appreciated here in England. In consequence we had taken on the mantle of the Prince’s special representatives (need I say, unjustifiably) and were freely admitted to the upper echelons of society. Suffice to say however that it had insufficient influence when endeavouring to gain free admission to Ljubljana’s lap dancing clubs!

The food was great, pancakes, pizzas, schnaps, salami, cheeses, schnaps, smoked pork, jam, schnaps, bread cabbage, soup, schnaps, pickles, fish and schnaps. A highlight of our culinary experiences was a meat dish in garlic and blueberry sauce recommended by our Slovene companion and translated as “bulls testicles.” The chef took us outside to choose our own balls, there was a delay in the proceedings due to the fact (understandably, perhaps) that my bull wouldn’t stand still. Anyway, all’s well and ends well, for me at least, it was a very tasty dish!

‘Skirrets, what on earth do I do with these!’ exclaimed Lesley Waters

 I hope the reaction on the programme gave delight and amusement that leading chefs were indeed baffled by our bag and the ten minute cooking time that appeared on the show, actually took over an hour and a half to film! Although it was scary being filmed in full costume, we hope that the enthusiasm and flavour of our special Museum and all our staff and volunteers came across, and that it is a brilliant place to visit. We certainly made sure the studio audience knew all about us and what we do, here in Singleton. We hope you enjoyed the programme and maybe have tried the recipe that the Ready, Steady, Cook team came up with for our skirretts! (It appears on the Ready, Steady, Cook web site if anyone would like to try it)

Cathy Flower-Bond – Interpretation Department.

The Access Project

The Landscape Conservation Management Plan was completed in June and supported our analysis that the right place to plan new parking and visitor access facilities is on the northern boundary of the site near Gonville Drive. This means that English Heritage is likely to support a planning application for development in that area, since they helped us commission and pay for the Plan and were represented on the steering group, and this has given us the confidence to go ahead with a sketch design project for the new facility.

We have engaged several consultants to work with Edward Cullinan Architects in developing the sketch design. Fulcrum Consulting are sustainability specialists looking at energy and services; Nicholas Pearson Associates are landscape architects; Land Design is a company which undertakes interpretation projects; James Rennie is our roads engineer; and Buro Happold are structural engineers. We have also engaged Andrew Dean, a catering consultant, and Evelyn Thurlby, who is helping with the business aspects of the project and developing the final brief.

We expect the sketch design project to be complete in late October or early November, after which we will consider what steps to take next.

Audience Development study

The Designation Challenge Fund (DCF) has benefited the Museum greatly over the past eight years but is currently being examined as part of the wider review of the Renaissance in the Regions programme, of which it forms a part. However, in July we were informed at short notice that we would be eligible for a £15,000 DCF grant to carry out audience development work, and luckily we had an established relationship with an experienced practitioner of such work, Stuart Davies. Stuart comes from a museum background but is widely known for his work in national policy and management, in particular the work he did on Renaissance in the Regions in 2000. He also helped us in the preparation of our Forward Plan earlier this year.

Stuart’s research will analyse the needs of both our current visitors and non-visitors through surveys, interviews and focus groups. He will also make use of the visitor surveys that were carried out by staff members this season. Much of the project will be aimed at improving the visitor experience on-site and linking it with heritage off-site through interpretation and education.

This study, which will be completed before the end of the year, making a timely contribution to our preparations for the Access project.

Replacing the white tent – DCMS/Wolfson grant approved

We have again been offered 66% capital funding from the DCMS/Wolfson fund, following the successful completion of the Vehicle & Implement Gallery. This time the project is for a building to replace the “white tent” behind Crawley Hall.

The tent was first put in place to provide a workshop in which Roger Champion could repair the timbers of Poplar Cottage in full view of the public – which the public enjoyed a good deal more than he did! In a sense it was a dress rehearsal for the Downland Gridshell, introducing the idea that our workshop processes are of interest to our visitors and should not be hidden away.

After Poplar Cottage was finished the tent eventually became covered accommodation for schools in inclement weather, and as such has become indispensible. However, the tent’s appearance does nothing to enhance the site, so a building has been planned that gives the same floor area but with a more traditional appearance – white rendered walls and a tiled roof, a similar formula to the modern ends of Crawley Hall.

Inside, the main space of the building will be used for school groups in term time and activities and demonstrations during half terms and holidays. The walls will be used for an exhibition of traditional building materials and methods, based on the existing displays in Hambrook barn but completely re-designed. Once that move has been made we will be able to use Hambrook barn as an introductory and orientation space – another dress rehearsal, but this time for the Access Project.

I am grateful to Alan Wood who has worked with me developing the design, which now has to be submitted for planning permission. If that is successful, and if sufficient funds can be raised to cover our 33% contribution, Henry Warner will supervise the construction project next summer.

Schools Service News

Building Blocks workshop gets a make over!

One of our KS1 workshops has had a make over! This hands-on workshop is extremely popular with younger school children, allowing them to explore aspects of building construction (timber framing, room use etc). The workshop consists of six trolleys, each containing different materials with the following aims:

To distinguish between raw materials and finished building materials used for houses.

To recognise the materials used in a building. To recognise the differences between materials used in old and modern houses.

To recognise the different ways that brick walls can be built.

To sequence the way in which timber can be changed.

To identify the different uses of rooms in an old house. To recognise the differences between the past and today.

To discuss and suggest reasons how and why buildings are located on a farm.

Each trolley has illustrations, for example, of Museum buildings, which support the learning aims of the workshop. During term times we run this workshop several times each week and as you can probably imagine the materials take quite a battering! So we were delighted when one of our Museum volunteers, Brenda Longman, agreed to take on the task of painting new illustrations to support the hands-on material. Brenda is a trained Illustrator and spent 22 years as a Graphic Designer, so she was well qualified to take on this job! I am very grateful to Brenda for all the hard work she has put in to this project. Brenda used watercolour as her medium, successfully highlighting the building materials and structures. I am hoping to make these illustrations available on the Schools Service website, so that teachers can use them as a resource either whilst on site or back in the classroom!

Collections Update

The Collections Team has continued to have its fingers in a variety of pies during the course of the summer.

Building upon our successful conservation of larger items from the collection, we have most recently been working on a Sussex Dung Cart which Ben Headon has repaired and repainted, and various pieces of agricultural machinery which Chris Tulley and John Walshe have returned to full working order. These items have now been included in the new Vehicle and Implement Gallery, located in the area behind West Wittering School. The gallery is now more or less full, with text panels giving details of the artefacts displayed there.

There will however be quite frequent changes and additions to the gallery as new items are acquired by the museum, the latest being a Dorset Wagon donated recently from Send near Guildford. It may seem odd to add a Dorset Wagon to our collections, but in this case I decided it would be beneficial to accept it; we have a complete history for the wagon, dating back to 1848 when it was built by the ancestor of its last owner, Jim Oliver. Jim also happened to have been a trustee of the Museum, and because of this connection, the great age of the wagon and the fact it provides a good comparison to our more local examples, I accepted the offer.

We have been heavily involved with the development of the Museum Woodyard and how best to interpret this as a working area to our visitors. It would be great to be able to have activity in the woodyard every day as we do with the mill, but the amount of wood we would process means that this is not economically viable at present as the vast majority of raw material has to be sourced and purchased externally.

As a compromise, we have decided to operate the woodyard during focussed weeks, named very originally as ‘Woodyard Weeks’. This enables the Collections Team to demonstrate all the pieces of machinery and timber conversion techniques, making best use of the limited resources we have; it also enables us to have a focus for the week – for example, the production of a field gate from the week’s activity.

We held our first Woodyard Week in July, and despite the whole thing being quite small scale to begin with and a relatively limited range of activities on display, it was extremely well received by our visitors and our next focus week is planned to coincide with the October half term break.

Work on the early 19th Century Hay Barn from Ockley is nearing completion. The wooden skeleton of the barn in the Upper Gonville field has been in place for some time, and Pete Betsworth has just finished laying two supporting brick walls under the frame. The Collections team will shortly begin to tile the roof. Once completed, the barn will house our threshing train, comprising the 1862 Marshalls threshing machine, elevator and living van as a permanent feature, though easily accessible for events such as the Autumn Countryside Show when these pieces will be demonstrated out on site.

Another site display currently undergoing changes is the Charlwood shed. For many years this has housed a number of wagons, but we are now in the process of displaying items related to the growing and processing of hops. Although we don’t have a huge number of hop artefacts, those we do have are generally in good condition and many of them are quite rare. The display aims not only to show some of our Collection items visitors may not normally see, but also to tie in with the hops grown for the first time this year by Farm Manager, Chris Baldwin.

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