Continuing our celebrations of the wonderful volunteers who give their time to the Weald & Downland Living Museum and its visitors, we talk to Diana Zeuner who has been volunteering here for over 50 years! She tells us of the changes she has seen over the years and how she has used her passion and skills in a variety of ways during this time.
I have been volunteering at the Museum in many different ways since I was 18 (I am now 70), when I met the Museum’s founder, Roy Armstrong, who was very good at inspiring people to help in his amazing project to establish an open-air museum of the Weald and Downland regions!
In those early days I met another person Roy had inspired, Chris Zeuner, who was appointed Keeper, and then Museum Director, who led the Museum’s development and established its ethos and reputation over some 30 years. The 50th anniversary of his appointment as Director is this year (2024). We were married in 1975, the same year that the Museum won the National Museum of the Year Award, the UK museum world’s top prize, so that was a very memorable time!
My first tasks were helping to make paths around the site, and thatching the recreated woodland bothy being constructed in the coppice. I carried out many different voluntary tasks over the years, from stewarding buildings to all kinds of practical work on the site including photography for PR purposes as the building exhibits expanded. And I had a short spell as manager of the working horse stables.
As a journalist and later, an editor, I produced the Museum’s magazine (which started as a newsletter), and I carried on for some 45 years, until Covid interrupted in 2020. As editor of the bi-monthly magazine for the Association of Independent Museums for 39 years I was involved in the development of the independent museum movement (of which the Museum was a founder, with Chris serving as a committee member, treasurer and chairman), and was able to help with ideas and suggestions for our Museum’s development.
I also founded and edited my own magazine, ‘Heavy Horse World’, which arose out of our introduction of farm livestock on the site, including the working horses, in the early 1980s. In 2010 I edited the Museum’s book on its first 40 years, ‘Building History’, which tells the story of how it came about and how it grew.
Recently I have joined the small archives group, which is accessioning historic paper-based material acquired since the Museum’s early days, both the Museum’s own history and donations relating to historic buildings and rural life from the public. Over the last 12 months we have tackled a backlog, and Karen Searle Barrett, Julie Aalen and I have accessioned more than 4,000 new entries! So that’s another memorable thing!
My favourite building is without doubt, Bayleaf, the Wealden late medieval farmhouse which was at the centre of our ground-breaking medieval farmstead project in the late 1980s. My best artefact is the Sussex wagon which we restored and took to shows and events around the region with our working horses over many years. Both buildings and wagons share something extraordinary – the high quality of workmanship necessary from the carpenters involved – over many centuries.
A little-known fact – the Museum was one of the first independents to introduce volunteers in the early 1970s and was a pioneer of volunteer training and development. In fact, all those whose inspiration led to the founding and development of the Museum in the first years, including trustees, were actually volunteers!
To find out more about the incredible impact our team of volunteers has on the Museum and the benefits of giving your time to the Weald & Downland Living Museum, please click here
