Chatting Behind the Lines - Curator's tales and musings

Yesterday was tourism day. This year more than any other, tourist venues need this sort of promotion. In a year which has seen the tourism industry hit hard by the pandemic, people's holidays cancelled, quarantine, restrictions and limitations, social media promotional activity is certainly welcomed. Today, the Museum staff started to wear facemasks whilst behind the reception counter. Previously, we had only worn masks when in the main museum gallery, cleaning toilets or elsewhere in public areas of the building.  But from today we were expected to wear a facemask behind the safety of our sneeze screen. Learning to communicate wearing a covering over your mouth has proved interesting. Visitors coming into the Museum have to cope with excessive background noise from other visitors and our six television screens, plus many visitors (rightly so) tend to stand back from the reception desk, for social distancing. So this makes letting visitors know how we are operating and what they ne...

Wilf Oldham, a Border Regiment Arnhem veteran, was due to travel up to Carlisle tomorrow to be awarded his MBE which he was initially notified of as part of the New Year's Honours List. Wilf, aged 100, lives in Greater Manchester and has had several ceremonies cancelled due to the onset of the pandemic, both nationally and locally. In a last ditch attempt to help, the Museum offered a venue outside the Greater Manchester area - Carlisle Castle, the former Depot and spiritual home of the Border Regiment. The hastily put-together plan involved meticulous military planning. After an initial phone call with Wilf and his grandson Lee, I started to see what we could do to help the ongoing situation. Emails went flying backwards and forwards to various offices of various Lord Lieutenants to see what was possible. Assisted by Wilf's local Airborne Forces Association, the decision was made to award the MBE on Saturday 26th September at the Castle...in just a week. It is amazing how peop...

  Last year I was lucky enough to go the Netherlands to take part in the commemorations of the 75th anniversary of Operation Market Garden. Determind to be independent (leaving booking accommodation to the last minute!) I decided to head to Oosterbeek by train, heading to Amsterdam by Eurostar to change trains for Oosterbeek, carrying all my kit and equipment for six nights under canvas. I had a vested interest in visit the Netherlands as the 1st Battalion of the Border Regiment were part of the 1st Air Landing Brigade who arrived west of Arnhem in 1944 to help defend the landing and drop zones. I was keen to find out where they had seen action and decided camping would allow me the flexibilty to go as I pleased. What I hadn't appreciated was the campsite was beside the river, right next to the Church where many soldiers were evacuated on the night of the 25th September. I couldn't have chosen a better base. The town was full of Paras who were there to commemorate 'a bridge...

Friday afternoon and a large package is delivered to the Museum. Wrapped in plastic and standing on a palette, it looked like an entry for the Turner Prize. Visitors asked what it was from this weird and wonderful black plastic clad shape. Museum staff knew it was the long awaited-for bench which had travelled all the way from Northern Ireland. Some months ago a call went out amongst veterans of the King's Own Royal Border Regiment to raise some money for a Regimental Op Banner memorial bench to be put in place at Palace Barracks Memorial Gardens in Holywood, Northern Ireland. Co-ordinated by Les and Paul, two of the veterans, the donations started rolling in and soon they had raised well over the target for the Op Banner bench. After some consideration, a second bench was commissioned and Les contacted me at the Museum to inform me that a KORBR bench would be made and sent on to the Castle. I was lucky enough to see photographs of the bench before it left the manufacturers but was...

Yesterday was a great day with the flypast of the NHS spitfire at 2.45pm. Scheduled to fly from Haltwhistle across to the Cumberland Infirmary, we knew it would fly across the Castle so we were looking forward to seeing one of the most iconic planes of the Second World War in the skies above. With only 35 spitfires currently flying, it was a rare opportunity which we couldn't miss. That the skies were cloudy and the timings altered made us a little apprehensive, but five minutes beforehand we cajoled our visitors outside and encouraged them to wait for the spectacle in the sky. Suddenly there was the familiar sound of engines and there she was! Flying majestically over the castle and around the area of the neighbouring infirmary. A wonderful sight. Another Second World War connection earlier in the afternoon, as I had been chatting to our Arnhem veteran on the telephone. Wilf is one hundred years old but sounds much younger, and it was an absolute pleasure to catch up with him. He ...

It's that time of year when young people head off to University to start the next stage of life's journey. This year has not been without its difficulties and problems, but at the start of this academic year students are currently packing boxes and organising their finances. many to begin new lives in new locations as undergraduate students. My daughter is one of them. Saturday morning saw us with a car full of boxes and bags, with everything from saucepan to stapler, ravioli to rug, ready to hit the motorway and head off across country to Yorkshire. I had undertaken a brief repack before we left when I realised that some of the boxes were way too big to fit through doorways, and incredibly heavy to lift. With her student accommodation located on the sixth floor I had to think about getting stuff into its final location!  We hit the road with plenty of time to spare to allow for hold-ups, delays and the inevitable coffee stops on the way.  The sun was shining as we cruised acr...

You may have picked up that my blog has slipped from a daily, regular post to every other day. My ability to log in and chat about the Museum/my day/issues is proving more difficult as the day job starts to take up more time. Creeping into after hours too.  It is good news that we are starting to become 'more normal' in our operations. We are still operating the flexi furlough system. To get us through the winter season we need to maximise income. We are also looking forward to the future, planning a more resilient and sustainable service. Some changes are needed to help weather any further lockdowns or limitations. We are operating a new way of working and we need to be adaptable, ready for any changes. Therefore we must look at our working practices and review our plans to help us move forward. So my blog posts are starting to slip as I look at funding opportunities, and work with the team to put together plans for the future. As we review our work, and look at ways of operat...

With changes in Government legislation about mass gatherings, it has made us think about if, or how we could restart any additional activity at the Museum. One area we have been considering restarting are our veterans lunches. I have met some of the veterans recently as they have started to go out and about, and one of the main questions has been when are the lunches restarting.  Obviously, things are changing rapidly at the moment. Any plans to host activity has to take into account guidance from the Government and Public Health England, ensuring that everyone who attends or helps at any activity is safe. Hosting just six people at any activity would be difficult. As guidance changes so do our plans. As we head towards the autumn and winter months when being outside becomes less of an option, we have to think seriously about how we can safely undertake any Museum activities other than host visitors to the main gallery. Not a position we had hoped to be in at this point in the year...

It is always good to get the support of the local press and see the Museum in print. It helps publicise our existence and lets people know that we are here. Every little helps...in the words of a well-known supermarket. Last week there was an article about the amount of visitors that have been coming to the Castle, despite the pandemic. How well the Castle had been doing during the summer, it told its readers. Nice piece in the local paper with some good and solid castle - themed words such as 'stormed' and besieged.' Despite, restricted numbers on-site we have had a good summer. Unfortunately, the article fails to mention the Museum, which have been working with the Castle site to ensure that each and every visitor has a safe and enjoyable visit. We are a small concern, with limited staffing and resources yet we have also had a good summer, have been 'besieged' and been busy throughout the holidays.  The Museum staff have done a sterling job, regularly cleaning the...

Some of our archives have an immediate relevance to a specific date with a location that is very relevant to the locality. This telegram is one of them.  It is the anniversary of Britain's declaration of war on Germany. The third of September 1939. 81 years ago today. This telegram was sent to the Castle, then the depot of the Border Regiment. The message from the War Office is clear 'war has broken out with Germany.' Little did we know what the next six years would bring and the impact it would have all over the world. This small piece of fragile paper is a gateway to a period in twentieth century history that impacted on every man, woman and child. From serviceman, to factory girl, to evacuee...the Second World War brought terror, fear, excitement, death. Shared experiences such as bombing and rationing affected both rich and poor. The war led to changes that saw the end of an empire, the beginning of a welfare state, a better life for  the poor, the elderly, the young an...

  We have been lucky over the past few years, to secure funding to help with temporary exhibitions at the Museum. From The Somme exhibition in 2016 to Blood, Sweat & Tears our Afghanistan exhibition last year, we have researched, written text, sourced photos and used objects from the collections to provide additional history for visitors. This evening I am finishing off an article about working with veterans on the Afghan project, and thinking about the great work they did to ensure the exhibition was factually correct. It was a fantastic co-produced project which has generated alot of interest from other Museums. Their contribution was exceptional and it was wonderful to work with them to produce a first class exhibition. So as I am thinking about BST, I have included the wonderful signpost produced by Tony, one of the participants. He phoned round his friends to get names of other Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) for the signpost and I persuaded him to include 'Barrow' for ...

  The Museum staff deal alot with enquiries by phone, by email and in person. We get the usual 'where is the nearest bit of Hadrian's Wall?' and 'any suggestions on places to eat?' which falls into our Tourist Information role. But we also get alot of family history enquiries. As part of our service, staff check Ancestry and Find my Past to supplement information we hold. These websites hold a variety of information including access to the census up to and including 1911. The census is such an interesting document (the one included in this blog post holds information about my great grandad Charles Jay Saward who was killed in August 1916) which is fascinating to peruse. We are currently looking forward to how we develop the Museum and take it into the future. One consideration is supporting people wanting to do research. With so much interest in family history, it is certainly an area that we are keen to develop. Watch this space!