Museum News

Autumn update

The jubilee exhibition which we mounted for the summer will be taken down over the first weekend of September, so there is just time to fit-in a visit – and/or send us a personal memory of 1952-53.

As late summer turns to early autumn it is very tempting to hope for an ‘Indian Summer’ to put off the thought of a difficult winter ahead. Meanwhile, we are preparing to replace the Platinum Jubilee memorabilia with an exhibition of Indian Culture. This is a visiting/temporary exhibition from South Gloucestershire Museums Group and will be touring many of the local museums.

We are also taking part in another (annual) heritage open-days activity, with this year’s theme being based around ‘astounding inventions’. The museum has two obvious examples; the ‘pink dyson’ (vacuum cleaner) originally developed by Jeremy Fry, and the chocolate bar invented in 1847 by Joseph Fry with an original displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Before that, chocolate was only taken as a drink, so the invention of the chocolate bar really did change consumer habits!

Over the summer we have been helping a young volunteer, Iris, who has paired-up with us as part of her Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. We are hoping that her interest in the ‘Hospital room’ will lead to a write-up on an ‘astounding invention’ in the medical world – developed right here in Frenchay!

We continue to rotate our cabinet of new & recent acquisitions. Over the summer, we have asked MSL Walling who are repairing the walls by the Village Hall, to save any interesting fragments of pottery and/or other potential artefacts. The latest exhibit is a one-third pint bottle thought to date from the 1950s and the days of free school milk (answers on a post-card if you know who famously stopped all that in the 1980s!)

Finally, we hope to take up the offer from a local (metal) detectorist to display some of his finds later in the autumn season.

Hugh Whatley (Chair, Frenchay Tuckett Society)