Author: EFDMuseum

D’Arcy Sallion Artwork

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Following on from November when local artists from Mannamead Art Group displayed their works inspired by the James Ward collection, we have another local artist displaying his artwork at the museum.

D'arcyD’Arcy Sallion belongs to Hazelwood Art Group, an art group of all abilities that meets in Hoddesdon once a week. Four of D’Arcy’s landscapes will be displayed in the museum café from the 29th January to the 15th February.

D’Arcy graduated from Middlesex University, London, in 1994, having studied graphic design and animation. He then went on to start his own design studio in Soho, London.

He started off painting landscapes as a hobby before he knew it was his calling and he was urged to continue. At first, his paintings were traditional and realistic before he had a clear vision of this unique style he uses today. It is astonishing to view this extreme textual art in person to see the depth and detail of the artwork.

D’Arcy’s texture is very unique as it’s created with mixed media. Using this texture technique allows for many layers of colour within colour. Seeing it in person you can really see the layers of paint and how the texture enhances the landscape.

www.darcyjsallion.com

Come and have a look at this artwork, on display in the museum café. The museum is open Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm and Saturdays 10am-5pm. Admission is free. This project is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Lowewood Museum wins award

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We are delighted to announce that Lowewood Museum has won the Transformation Award from Hertfordshire Association of Museums at their inaugural awards event.

LowewoodMuseum-018The award was given for the shop and café area at the Museum. It was recently refurbished as part of the Arts Council England funded No Borders development project, which also involved Epping Forest District Museum and Chelmsford Museum.

 

Lowewood Museum, which is run by Epping Forest District Council in partnership with Borough of Broxbourne Council, was one of three projects to be short listed for the award.

Museums, Heritage and Culture Manager Tony O’Connor, who attended the award ceremony on Friday, 16 November at North Hertfordshire Museum, Hitchin said, “I was absolutely delighted to receive this award on behalf of the team at Lowewood Museum. It is a great privilege to be able to develop the public offer we provide at Lowewood Museum, helping to make it a vibrant and welcoming attraction for visitors and residents to the Borough of Broxbourne. The funding from Arts Council England through the ‘No Borders’ project has had a huge impact in enhancing our museum offer.”

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The new shop and café area has brought new visitors to the Museum, allows space to display a wider range of gifts and books, and provides a great space to host private views for exhibitions and family friendly activities.

 

Leader of Borough of Broxbourne Council, Mark Mills-Bishop said, “The award is a great achievement for the hard work done in transforming Lowewood Museum as part of the No Borders project. It is testimony to our drive and commitment to making Lowewood Museum the best in Hertfordshire.”

LowewoodMuseum-010Lowewood Museum is open Wednesday – Friday 10am – 4pm and Saturday 10am – 5pm.

 

Museum says thank you to The National Lottery players

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Museum says thank you to The National Lottery players

#ThanksToYou

From Monday 3 – Saturday 9 December 2018, Lowewood Museum and Epping Forest District Museum are offering 10% discount in their gift shops to National Lottery players.

The museums are joining hundreds of other participating National Lottery funded visitor attractions across the UK saying thanks to people, who have raised money for good causes by buying a lottery ticket.

The idea is simple: any visitor who presents a National Lottery ticket or scratchcard between Monday 3 and Saturday 9 December gets a 10% discount in the museum’s gift shop.

Lowewood Museum has received £183,700 for exhibition and engagement projects including two First World War Projects commemorating the centenary of the Armistice.

 

Epping Forest District Museum has received £1,821,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The money paid for the recent redevelopment of the museum as well as a range of projects, enabling community engagement and collections acquisition.

Ros Kerslake, Chief Executive of the Heritage Lottery Fund, said:

“December is a wonderful time to experience the UK’s rich, diverse and exciting heritage, which has been transformed by more than £7.8bn National Lottery funding since 1994.  This is a small gesture of thanks and a way of giving something back to the people who buy tickets.”

 

Terms and Conditions

  • One National Lottery ticket provides 10% off in the Museum Gift Shop and Refreshment Area.
  • All National Lottery games qualify for the offer, including tickets from any National Lottery draw based game or National Lottery Scratchcard. Proof of ticket can be paper or digital.
  • The offer is valid on the days the museum is open between 3 and 9 December. Lowewood Museum is open 10am to 4pm on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and from 10am to 5pm on Saturday.
  • Only one ticket can be used per transaction.
  • The offer is only valid on Museum stock items and not items sold by the Friends of Lowewood Museum.

Local museums represented at National Service of Thanksgiving

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Staff from Epping Forest District Museum, Waltham Abbey and Lowewood Museum, Hoddesdon attended The National Service of Thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey on 11 November 2018, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armistice, having been invited by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

 

The Department for Digital, Media and Sport asked HLF to nominate people to attend the service, after recognising the huge contribution HLF and its First World War projects have made to the centenary. As a result over 300 people involved with these project across the UK, attended the service on Sunday.

 

Our HLF Projects

Our centenary projects were made possible by grants totalling £124,000 from HLF, which distributes the heritage share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide variety of projects across the UK. HLF has invested £97million in 2,200 First World War centenary projects.

 

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The Walter Spradbery, Artist in War and Peace exhibition is on display at Epping Forest District Museum until Saturday 22 December 2018. It focuses on the artist’s time in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War, and the paintings he made for the first Imperial War Museum displays.

 

all diaries closed and medal and photo.jpgStephen Warner, One Man’s Journey through War was on display at Lowewood Museum from May until September 2018. It explored the First War World through the diaries of Warner, who served with the Royal Army Medical Corps and the Essex Regiment in France and went on to win a Military Cross for bravery.

 

Broxbourne: We Will Remember Them, focuses on First World War soldiers from the Borough of Broxbourne. People are invited to share their stories, memories, photographs and other artefacts. Pupils from local schools will create embroidered postcards to commemorate the sacrifices given by soldiers. There will be a number of sharing days in the Borough of Broxbourne, through December to February, for people to come and tell their stories. The Broxbourne: We Will Remember Them display will start touring from the end of February 2019.

Lowewood Museum project wins National Lottery support

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cheshunt war memorial
Cheshunt War Memorial

Lowewood Museum has received a National Lottery grant of £16,140 for Broxbourne: We Will Remember Them, a project to record, share and commemorate the lives of First World War soldiers from Broxbourne.

Volunteers will be recruited to research stories of those who fought, using the Borough’s war memorials, archives and personal collections.

Local sewing groups will come together to create commemorative embroidered postcards, and a number of community sharing days will take place at the Museum for people to share their own stories of ancestors and friends who fought in the First World War.

 

Through online information, digital records and a touring exhibition, the project will bring local people together to preserve the stories of those who served in the First World War, ensuring their legacy lives on.

Councillor Dee Hart, Cabinet Member for Leisure and Culture said: “We are overjoyed that support from National Lottery Players will make this meaningful project possible.

“During our special Year of Community the project will bring the community together to share their stories and help remember those of others involved in the First World War.

“This project will add great value to our ongoing work in commemoration of the First World War centenary, recording and sharing the stories of our war heroes.”

Robyn Llewellyn, Head of Heritage Lottery Fund East of England, said:

“The impact of the First World War was far reaching, touching and shaping every corner of the UK and beyond. Thanks to National Lottery Players, Lowewood Museum will work with the community in Broxbourne to explore the continuing legacy of this conflict and broaden our understanding of how it has shaped our modern world.”

Broxbourne Council set up a Commemorative Panel to oversee a programme of events and initiatives between 2014 and 2018. These have included the For The Fallen community performance, screenings of War Horse and Private Peaceful, commemorative heritage plaques to recognise the contribution of Edith Cavell and Admiral Sir Hedworth Meux, the digitalisation of Stephen Warner’s war diaries, commemorative poppies at the Cheshunt Old Pond roundabout, a ‘War and Peace’ poetry competition and the granting of Freedom of Entry to the Royal Anglian Regiment.

The funding has been made possible by money raised from National Lottery players.

Share your stories and be part of a Museum exhibition

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St Catherine’s School, Hoddesdon celebrates being open for 200 years this October. Lowewood Museum is looking for past pupils to help remember what school life was like.

If you attended St Catherine’s School, or any of the schools which have joined to form St Catherine’s i.e. St Paul’s Infants School and Haslewood Junior School, please get in touch and share your memories.

Lowewood Museum will be celebrating the 200 year anniversary with an exhibition and are also looking for any objects that you would be able to loan to put on display.

 

This project is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Please contact Lowewood Museum 01992 445596 or email museum.leisure@broxbourne.gov.uk

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Life as a First World War Hospital Orderly

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Life as a First World War Hospital Orderly

Inspired by the diaries of Stephen Warner

Helen Martin – Project volunteer

Stephen Warner, whose family lived in Hoddesdon during the First World War, worked as a hospital orderly at the St John’s Ambulance Brigade base clearing hospital in Étaples from 1915-1917. During this time he was stationed in the two operating theatres, and in the X-ray department. His diaries give us an insight into the work of the support staff at the hospital, and the hospital in general.

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A hand-drawn and coloured sketch of a view of Étaples where there were several hospitals including that of St. John’s Ambulance Brigade and other training camps.
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Interior of the operation theatre in which Stephen worked showing the sterile floors and surface and the views outside of the windows. Both were things he talked about in his diary. (Source: Museum of the Order of St John, postcard book.)

The life of a hospital orderly during the war was a hard, and regimented, one, and orderlies were expected to react to constantly changing circumstances. They were responsible for a range of tasks across the hospital including transporting patients around the hospital site, preparing patients for, and assisting with, surgery, and running unit baths. They worked alongside doctors, surgeons, nurses, and Voluntary Aid Detachments (V.A.Ds) and would have been exposed to sights that they could never have imagined. Orderlies worked closely with the patients in the wards too, and many of them received ‘souvenirs’ of pieces of shrapnel pulled from wounds.

In Volume 1 of his diaries, Stephen outlines a typical day of light duties –

“While work is comparatively light I may as well take the opportunity of putting down as full a diary as possible as I may have less time later on so will now give a short description of one’s day here as now arranged:

            5:30am Reveille (or revally as it is usually called)

            6.00am Parade for early fatigue duty – whatever it may be. There are various  parties made up of various duties.

            7.15am Breakfast, tidy up bed and kit.

            8.30am Parade – for fatigue duty

            12.15pm Dinner + leisure

            2.00pm Parade for afternoon fatigue

            5.15pm Tea

            6.00pm Parade for next days orders. Free after this to walk out

            9.00pm Roll call in dormitories

            9.30pm Last post

            9.45pm Lights out” Vol 1, pg.

In addition to this daily routine, there are multiple instances in the diaries where Stephen describes being woken in the middle of the night to convoys of incoming wounded men. Lack of sleep and constant activity were normal. On Sunday the 2nd of July 1915 he wrote:

Sunday 2 July 1916 “Last night convoy of 79. Today another of 302!! So all of a sudden we are up to the eyes in it! 57,000 casualties so they say to date. The result was that having operated in the morning we started again at 8:30pm with eight cases, getting into bed at 3.00am!! Just as is was beginning to get light! Consequently I fell tired and sleepy today…” (Vol 2, pg. 85)

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Étaples Convoy Yard, Ernest Proctor, 1918. The painting is of the Étaples convoy yard showing the area where ambulance vans would arrive with wounded soldiers. Orderlies to unload them as quickly as possible. (Source: Imperial War Museum, ART 3353)

The work was hard, but there were also opportunities to socialise and relax away from the stress of the hospital. Stephen gives detailed descriptions of his days off dining in Étaples, bathing in the sea, and writing plays to be performed for the staff. He, and many of his colleagues, became avid collectors of flowers; pressing them in his diaries, and sending samples off the Kew to be identified. These activities helped to alleviate the stress and intensity of the daily work at the hospital, but the calm moments were few and far between.

Diaries, Drawings and Dried Plants

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Caring for a diverse collection

Rachel Arnold – Project Officer

 

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A snapshot of the variety of the Warner collection

The first time that I opened the box containing Stephen Warner’s First World War diaries I was amazed at the variety of material housed within.

This collection was compiled by Warner between 1914 and 1918, and added to by subsequent generations. It contains hand-written diaries with pressed flowers and plants, newspaper cuttings, photographs and medals. The contents are very well preserved, wrapped in layers of tissue paper inside an archival box but their storage could be vastly improved to stop conservation issues developing in the future.

Thanks to funding from the Heritage Lottery we now have money needed to achieve these improvements.

Why do we want to keep them?

The varied war collection once belonged to Stephen Warner, whose relatives lived in Hoddesdon, and it documents his unique war experience.

A first glance at the diaries and their physical properties already tells us several things about Stephen’s experience. For example: pencil was used more often than ink, implying that ink was more difficult to come by. Flowers were pressed within the pages; showing us that, despite the ongoing war, men in service continued with their hobbies and interests. Especially in these centenary years of the commemoration of the First World War it is important to ensure that this collection survives well into the future for generations to learn from and enjoy.

What are the problems?

Historical objects react in different ways with their environment and with other materials that they come in contact with. This often makes it difficult to choose the correct environmental conditions to preserve collections in storage.

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One page of pressed plants in volume 2 of Stephen Warner’s diaries. Note the yellowing of the adjacent page.

The diaries, which also act as herbaria (pressed plant collection), consist of paper and organic materials and prefer a relatively high humidity level. This prevents drying out, shrinkage and cracking.

 

The plants in the diaries have caused yellowing of several neighbouring pages which is likely to have been caused by acid degradation on the paper from seepage of residual organic material from the flowers.

 

 

 

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An example of the negative corrosive affects that a poor environment can have on the surface of coins. This is the damage that could be done if Stephen’s war medals are mistreated.

Medals benefit from low humidity levels to prevent damp and subsequent corrosion or chemical reactions. The metal of medals can also react to their environment and even the oxygen in air can cause the surface of the medal to change and corrode.

 

 

 

 

Photographs also prefer lower humidity levels and can react with their environment – resulting in spotting, loss of colour or fading (depending on the production quality of the photograph).

 

Already, you can see that we have conflicting environmental needs in this small collection of objects. Although it is normal practise at museums to separate materials in storage we would like to keep all of this material together at least for the duration of the project and the exhibition. This will avoid disassociation of any items and make them easily accessible.

The solution

Each diary’s pages will be interspersed with the finest grade Japanese paper (very thin and chemically stable) beside each pressed plant to prevent further acid degradation on neighbouring pages and subsequent yellowing. They will be placed in specially made conservation grade archival boxes that open to allow easy access to the diaries.

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Upgraded storage of some of the photographs in the Warner collection. They are now inside their own plastic sleeve allowing easy visual access, increased structural stability and protection from fingerprints.

Photographs will be placed in specially made chemically inert plastic sleeves that prevent them from touching other objects and make sure they are still visible. This has the added benefit of making them structurally stronger with a robust casing.

Medals will be put in conservation grade plastic boxes which are airtight. This keeps their environment chemically stable from the other pollutants in the box that might come from the organic material. We can also put silica gel packets in the boxes which absorb moisture and help to reduce the humidity.

 

The above is a simplified description of the environmental and conservation problems encountered. For more information on the topic, please consult the following online resources:

The Victoria and Albert Museum

The British Library

The British Museum

Preservation Equipment Ltd.

 

 

“I have had a proud day…I have been awarded the Military Cross!”

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On February 28, 100 years ago, Stephen Warner was decorated for his brave actions on the Front Line.

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For the centenary of the First World War Lowewood Museum is celebrating the life of Stephen Warner. Stephen was one of many unsung heroes of the war. Before fighting on the front line he spent over a year with the Royal Army Medical Corps and attended surgical operations as a theatre orderly, saving the lives of hundreds of men. He was an inspirational leader and much loved Second Lieutenant of A company, 9th Battalion, Essex Regiment, based I Arras, France. He won the Military Cross for organising successful raids on enemy trenches, taking prisoners and capturing a machine gun. This February it will be one hundred years since he won this prestigious award.

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Handwritten note from the Adjutant awarding Stephen Warner the Military Cross. The note dates from 18/2/1918.

 

 

 

Tuesday 5 February 1918 – “The raid is done! The raid is a huge success! Thanks be!… Congratulations have been showered upon me and the Brigadier has interviewed me…and expressed his satisfaction.”

 

 

 

 

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The Military Cross awarded to Stephen Warner. The reverse of this medal has Stephen’s name and regiment number inscribed

 

 

The Military Cross (MC) is a British military decoration that, at the time, was only bettered by the Victoria Cross and the Conspicuous Service Cross. It was introduced during the First World War and awarded to officers for “gallantry in the field.” Thousands of them were given out during the First World War and it, along with the standard issue service medals, was essential in recognising the immense efforts of British soldiers and volunteers in the war.

Stephen Warner assisted with a raid in January 1918 and led some of his own in February 1918 while based in Arras. Looking at the surviving documentation Stephen was given orders relating to the time, date and location of the task but it was up to him, as a patrol leader to decide who to take and how to carry out the task. On the 5th February Stephen and his patrol of 3 men crawled across ‘No-Man’s-Land’ in the dead of night. The conditions were muddy and treacherous while the men had to cut defensive barbed wire but they succeeded and leapt into the German Trench. Remarkably they managed to take two German soldiers as prisoners, capture a machine gun and get back behind their own lines with no casualties – except for ‘a couple of scratches’. For this effort and other successes he was awarded the MC.

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German soldier’s cutting wire in unknown location on ‘No-Man’s-Land’. Stephen and his patrol would have had a similar, uncomfortable experience while cutting the enemy wire. Source: The Daily Herald.

February 28 1918 “I have had a proud day. A letter has just come from the adjutant telling me that I have been awarded the military cross! I do not feel that I did anything very wonderful, but I suppose the standard to gain the award is lower than it used to be.”

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Mud-filled shell holes across ‘No-Man’s-Land’. This section of the battlefield is in Verdun, 1917 after the major battle there. Looking at this image it is possible to imagine the horrible conditions faced while crawling across the fields at night-time to attack the enemy trenches. Source: The Daily Herald.

It is testament to Stephen’s character that he is so modest when he receives the award, commenting that he thinks the ‘standard to gain the award is lower than it used to be’. He also talks in diary entries about how satisfying it is to finally do something he feels contributes to the war effort in an immediately gratifying way.

 

 

At Lowewood Museum we are delighted to have Stephen’s diaries, letters and other documents that record his unique experience. We are using these to create an exhibition which is due to open on 19 May 2018.