BFI Mediatheque

Discovery Museum   The Archives
Posted by administrator on August 26, 2010     Permalink     Comments (1)

I’m the senior manager responsible for Archives, where we generally work with historical documents on parchment or paper, sometimes hundreds of years old.

The most exciting recent development for the Archives, however, has been the opening of the BFI Mediatheque “a digital jukebox of film and TV programmes, giving us access to the British Film Institute’s extensive collections”. Click here for more details.

The first weeks of July were a scramble to get the room fitted out with new carpet, specially designed viewing booths, and computer screens in time for the grand opening on the 20th, but we managed it, and it was a great occasion in spite of being possibly the wettest evening of the year!

There was a real buzz as visitors saw the Mediatheque for the first time, after speeches from Amanda Nevill, Director of the BFI and Graeme Thompson, formerly of Tyne Tees Television and now of Sunderland University. People immediately started searching for their favourites – from TV programmes like Basil Brush and Monty Python to full length British films like The Wicker Man and 1984.

 

Guests enjoy the Mediatheque on opening night

There was also a lot of interest in the local content from both the national and regional collections – the building of the Tyne Bridge, skipping grannies in Benton in the 1920s, competitive leek growing in Ashington, Durham Miners Gala and the Hoppings a hundred years ago.

Durham Miners’ Gala 1910, just one of the early films in the Mediatheque

Since the opening we’ve seen a steady stream of viewers, but there’s still plenty of space at the moment so it’s a good chance to see what’s available before everybody hears about it.

Altar your Preconceptions

Arbeia South Shields' Roman Fort   Archaeology   Collections & Objects   Exhibitions
Posted by administrator on August 19, 2010     Permalink     Comments (2)

I have worked at Arbeia Roman Fort and Museum for nearly four years now and I’ve only just been on a full tour of the site! I know I should be ashamed of myself and I am!

But I’m glad I finally got around to doing it because there’s so much more to Arbeia than I thought.  Obviously I already knew all the essentials I need for my job like dates and how a fort would have looked during Roman times but I’d never fully appreciated the vast and varied history of the site.  Occupation began as far back as the Iron Age and certainly didn’t end with the departure of the Romans.

With each of these blogs I’m going to attempt to provide a little-known truth about the history of Arbeia and hopefully bring the site to life!

Altar your preconceptions!

After the departure of the Roman Army in approximately 410AD, Arbeia and its rich history were forgotten for over 1000 years.  The land was farmed and communities sprung up but the Romans remained buried in time.  Then, in 1672 a spectacular discovery was to change all of this and begin the story of Arbeia’s rediscovery.

1672 AltarAltar Text

Enhanced Image of AltarAltar Text

A farmer was ploughing his fields when he came across a stone inscription. It was sent off to Oxford where experts discovered that it was a Roman altar dedicated to the gods, thanking them for allowing the safe journey back to Rome of Caracalla and Geta.

They were the feuding sons of the Emperor Septimius Severus who had visited Arbeia as part of his campaign to occupy and pacify Scotland, a mission which had achieved some degree of success. In AD211 he died in York, the rumour being that his own son, Caracalla, had bribed the doctor to hasten his death! Ahh, families!

Imperial Seal showing Caracalla, Septimius and Geta. Found at Arbeia Roman Fort

After their return to Rome, tensions mounted between the two brothers, resulting in Caracalla stabbing Geta to death in front of their mother.  Caracalla himself was later murdered by his own soldiers as he relieved himself behind a palm tree! Hmmmm….Karma?

After the discovery of the altar, the site remained as farmland for another 100 years.  Obviously the investigation of Roman finds was not high on the list of priorities for 17th Century farmers!

Many people believe that excavations at Arbeia didn’t begin until 1845 but it has since been discovered that in 1796 the area was dug up, in a fairly amateur fashion, by Nicholas Fairless, a wealthy local magistrate.  He had recently visited Pompeii and was spurred on by this experience to make his own grand discoveries. I know how he felt – I always come back off holiday with big plans and ideas which rarely come to fruition!  However, to give him his dues, Nicholas did set to work straight away and made some very interesting discoveries.

He had heard about the 1672 altar so he knew there must be more Roman remains in this area and with the help of some friends and local miners he uncovered a Bath House. This has unfortunately yet to be rediscovered. Rather tragically, Nicholas was later killed by striking miners who were unhappy about the working condition at their colliery.

It seems violence and bad luck have followed this altar from the day it was first offered up to the gods.  I’m sure it’s all coincidence but just to be on the safe side, I’ll keep my distance from now on….

The altar can be seen as part of the permanent collection at Arbeia Roman Fort and Museum in South Shields. For more information go to:

http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/arbeia/news/secrets-of-the-altar-revealed/

A look at the dodo

Collections & Objects   Collections Management   Great North Museum: Hancock   Natural Sciences
Posted by administrator on August 17, 2010     Permalink     Comments (1)

The collections held in the Great North Museum Resource Centre contain an intruiging little cardboard box labelled ‘Dodo bones’. I’ve recently had a request from a researcher to look at these bones and it’s given me a rare oportunity to open up the box and carefully unwrap these unusual specimens so that I can photograph them.

At first glance, they’re rather unremarkable. They are small and brown, some with traces of dirt and others old glue, where someone has tried to reconstruct the skeleton in the past. Looking more closely, the bones show some very interesting features.

It’s always intruiging to look at the remains of extinct organisms. The Dodo is famously extinct – it’s become synonymous with the concept. It is also famously inept. A previous scientific name for the bird was Didus ineptus. We’re used to thinking of the Dodo as stupid, fat and slow, because that’s how I’ve always seen it depicted in cartoons.  

A very dopey (and rather scary) looking Dodo in this contemporary illustration from the 17th Century.

A  20th Century model of the Dodo is in our collection, and shows the classic conception of the animal. A dumpy, dopey bird with a huge rear end decorated with a silly tuft of feathers. A creature doomed to be wiped out as soon as the European sailors turned up looking for fresh meat.

An early 20th Century model of the Dodo

But this is rather unfair. Animals living on isolated islands, a long way away from people or other large predators (and the Dodo’s home, Mauritius was just such an island) have no fear of being eaten. The Dodo’s alleged stupidity was probably just the result of evolving in the absence of any threat from large carnivores.

And what do the bones tell us? The 14 small bones in the collection include a mandible, fragments of the pelvis and a number of limb bones from the bird’s stocky legs and small wings. These fragments can tell us something about what the dodo was like.

The bones of the lower mandible show a large bill, and with its powerful hooked tip, it could probably have delivered a pretty nasty nip (lets hope a few of those 17th Century sailors got some bruised fingers).The dodo’s limb bones reveal that it had powerful legs and would have probably been able to put on a fair turn of speed.

Bones from the lower mandible of a Dodo

 

Femur from a Dodo

 It’s always exciting when we get the opportunity to learn more about the specimens in the collection. I’ll be very interested to see what the researcher has to say about these.

Supporting volunteering in Museums

Discovery Museum   Volunteering
Posted by administrator on August 12, 2010     Permalink     Comments (2)

What do volunteers do within the Museums you may wonder…

I can assure you that it is more than you may realise! I’m the Culture Track Project Coordinator and I support a number of volunteers who are unemployed to develop new skills and experience through volunteering in museums and galleries to help prepare for work.

I’m really lucky that I get to work with and support such a wide range of people. Every day is different, helping volunteers to put to use their new skills and to try new things, like how to create a book from scratch or how to make and edit a short film.

Here’s a group of Discovery Museum volunteers. Alex, Brian, Stephen, Malcolm and Paul

In the last year there have been over 400 people volunteering across Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums and out of this group 69 people have been involved in the Culture Track project. So far 15 Culture Track volunteers have secured employment, some of whom now work with us in the museums, which is fantastic!!

The volunteers have been involved in so many different roles, from dressing up as Roman Soldiers, to object handling, to creating their own radio show, winning awards and much more in between.

Object handling at the Discovery Museum. Stephen, one of our volunteers, gets to grips with a fox stole with Curatorial Assistant Alex Boyd and Project Coordinator Lauren Prince

My blog will feature more about volunteering within the museums and give you an insight into why people volunteer and why we involve volunteers in our work within the museums.

The volunteers visiting The Regional Resource Centre at Beamish last year. Paul, Richard, Colin, Malcolm, Stephen, Sam and Derek

Tynemouth Lifeboat Station

Collections & Objects   Collections Management   Local History   Maritime History
Posted by administrator on August 9, 2010     Permalink     Comments (1)

One of the current tasks of the Documentation team is to work through a collection of old maritime glass negatives. We scan the negatives and create computer records about each one. These are two images we find really interesting, capturing an important piece of local history.

Tynemouth lifeboat station

Tynemouth lifeboat station

On 9th to 10th April 1941, the Tynemouth Lifeboat Station was hit by a German bombing raid, the devastation it caused is easy to see. The lifeboat in this image was a new 41 foot Watson Type which was due to be named “John Pymont”. This is the only time in the history of the RNLI that a boat has been lost “unchristened”.

Tynemouth lifeboat station

Tynemouth lifeboat station