On Wednesday it was the first birthday of the fledgling Havering Museum. This is conveniently located just downstairs from my apartment in the Romford Brewery redevelopment and I was delighted to be invited along.
With an award of nearly £1 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund local volunteers have converted rooms on the ground floor of the old Ind-Coope brewery to house a collection of artifacts which tell the story of our borough. The Friends of Havering Museum were formed in 2000 and campaigned for nine years to get the funding they required. The collection includes Roman pottery, prehistoric tools, 19th century weights and measures and World War II mementos. There are also many interesting photographs charting the borough's growth to the present day.
In a textbook demonstration of Big Society activity, volunteers dressed up in historic costumes for the evening and read poems to celebrate. There was a buffet and a raffle and I became closely acquainted with the stocks...
Many happy returns to the Friends of Havering Museum! It is well worth a visit and details including opening times can be found at http://www.haveringmuseum.org.uk/ .
10 comments:
Have they reserved a place for you?
Do you choose these photos just to provide me with late night entertainment? You know I can't help myself.
I have to say it looks to me as if it wasn't an entirely new experience, Roger, you naughty man. Was Brian at the opening?
And you live in a brewery? I'm trying not to make any obvious jokes, but it's not easy.
Mrs A, like any good author I always consider my readers' inclinations when writing my pieces and choosing photographs to illustrate them.
I seek to educate, inform, amuse and sometimes even provoke...
And I see that you have copied my photograph. It was taken by one of the museum staff and I am sure they would welcome a modest donation from you in lieu of royalties...
Is that ccontraption round the wrists something similar to the stocks or is it a form of bondage?
I seek to educate, inform, amuse and sometimes even provoke...
In that case I would like to hear your take on the Tory Walk-out yesterday.
Preventing a debate on JJs motion on Cycle safety and another on Olympic Clean Air Zone.
Rr, it is an unusual contraption - supposed to be stocks and used as part of an intercative display for young visitors. However real stocks, like those on the green at Havering-atte-Bower were secured around the ankles, not the wrists. The pillory was a similar device that confined the wrists but it had a larger third aperture for the victim's head. The museum display seems to be a less painful cross between the two, and omits the pelting with ordure and rotten vegetables that traditionally accompanied such punishments.
Weggis - the walk out is a complex matter and concluded an otherwise productive question time meeting. I will write it all up in a separate post later.
RE - I do know the stocks at Havering Green. I recall, before the days when we had a car, that we used to go there on what was London's longest 'bus route - the 175 from Blackwall Tunnel to Ongar. However, it ran no through journeys but had a series of overlapping sections. In about 1946 my parents nearly became licensees of the nearby Royal Oak until they learned that there was no sanitation!
ha Mr Evans,not my cup of tea, darling, but Mrs Angry is very broadminded ... I've had a lot of visitors calling by to admire your photo, especially your colleagues at City Hall. I believe some of them may have a particular interest in disciplinary artefacts, and I must say I am impressed by your knowledge of the history of crime and punishment in Havering, especially the latter ... I do hope no one pelted you with rotten fruit,though, in your very suave suit? Sounds like Weggis might have liked to. Oh, apologies to the staff at Havering Museum, for nicking their photo, but in return I happily given them some free publicity,in return, being, unlike your Tory chums in Barnet, a keen supporter of local museums!
Are you saying, Mrs Angry, that most of the "Tory chums" in Barnet should be museum exhibits?
RR: do you know, I think that perhaps most of them already are? Certainly there would be popular support for one particular councillors to be stuffed and mounted in a display ...
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