Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews
Since Letchworth and Hitchin Museums closed to the public in September 2012, staff have been understandably very busy with dismantling the old displays, cleaning objects and packing them. There have been plenty of updates on the blog about these sorts of activities.
What about the archaeology? This summer, there was no excavation in Norton to write about, largely because Norton Community Archaeology Group members have needed time to catalogue the nearly 14,000 finds made on and around the henge. I have also needed time to work on the archaeological elements of the displays in the new museum, choosing objects, drafting labels and looking at artefacts in the stores.
Talking to Norton Community Archaeology Group in 2007
There is another side to my work, which can be overlooked: I give a lot of talks about the heritage of the district. These can be to special interest societies, to local community groups or to academic audiences. They can be about a very specific topic or about something more general (but related to North Hertfordshire, obviously). Most of them take place in the evening, but some are during the day, especially at lunchtime. The audiences can vary in size from a dozen or so people to more than a hundred.
I always use PowerPoint for my talks. I find it useful because I can put up text as well as pictures, include video and sound, and animate the presentation. It is so much simpler than the old days of using 35 mm slide transparencies, which would sometimes be put in upside down or back-to-front. I can also keep dozens of different talks on my laptop because one never knows when one might be called on to give a talk…
Autumn is usually the busiest time for evening talks. To give some idea of what I have been up to, here is what I have been doing for the past seven weeks or so:
7 September: an afternoon stroll around Hitchin town centre for Hitchin Historical Society. Here, I talk about the early development of the town, mostly describing what can no longer be seen, and try to put it into its national context. It turns out that Hitchin is a very unusual and rather important place.
Corporate Induction group at the entrance to Royston Cave
23 September: NHDC Corporate Induction. All new council employees have a day spent learning about their employer and about the district. My involvement is to give a guided coach tour, covering the four towns (Baldock, Hitchin, Royston and Letchworth Garden City in order of age): there isn’t enough time in an afternoon to do justice to the rural areas.
25 September: INSETT day at Celtic Harmony camp. Celtic Harmony is an educational trust based on a reconstructed Iron Age farm at Brickendon. Recent changes to the National Curriculum mean that teachers now have to cover British prehistory, which many are not confident about. I took them through 800,000 years of the human story up to the Roman Conquest in just an hour.
1 October: talk on Norton Henge to the North Hertfordshire Branch of the National Trust. This large group meets in Christchurch, in Hitchin. I talked to them about the results of four years’ excavation on the site, which lies between Letchworth Garden City and Baldock, beside the A1M.
7 October: the speaker booked to talk to the North Hertfordshire Archaeological Society couldn’t make it. I supply the IT support to the group (laptop, projector and screen) and, as I was there with my equipment, I stepped in and gave a talk on Ancient Baldock: Britain’s First Town? It’s for this sort of emergency that I always keep a stock of talks ready to give at a moment’s notice.
9 October: another INSETT day at Celtic Harmony. As well as giving the teachers an informal lesson, I handed round a selection of genuine artefacts from Palaeolithic handaxes to a Late Iron Age pottery bowl. This is something that people don’t often get to experience and being able to engage directly with the objects helps information about them to sink in more thoroughly.
10 October: talk to the Welwyn Archaeological Society on Norton Henge. This time, I put the henge into its local context, with contemporary sites in Letchworth Garden City and Baldock. Our local landscape looks like a smaller version of what has recently been discovered around Stonehenge.
An apparently unique fifth-century cup from Baldock
13 October: talk to the Manshead Archaeological Society in Dunstable on Roman Pottery in the Fifth Century? Becoming “Saxon” in the North-East Chilterns. This is based on an academic paper I gave a few years ago at a conference, exploring the remarkable sequence of sub-Roman (fifth-century) pottery from Baldock and surrounding areas and the lack of early Saxon remains in the district.
15 October: lunchtime talk to the Letchworth Support Group for Macular Disease on Roman dining. This is a talk accompanied by genuine Roman cooking and food presentation ceramics as well as puddingstone quern for grinding grain into flour. Being able to handle the objects is a great help for people with macular disease, who might have difficulty watching an illustrated talk.
16 October: Norton Community Archaeology Group’s AGM, where I talked about the landscape around the henge and particularly about a site at Works Road in Letchworth Garden City, where some remarkable Neolithic finds were made between 1997 and 2000. They include equipment for working gold, the burial of a child, a house and an antler pick.
Each talk requires preparation because each audience is different. There is the outline to write, which mustn’t be pitched at too academic a level but at the same time must not talk down to the listeners. There are pictures to find, which often involves getting an object from the store for photography. Even though I have given three talks on the henge in Norton over the past few weeks, every time it has been a different talk, largely because I think of new ideas while I’m preparing a new version.
Graffiti of 1601 in the porch of St Mary’s Church, Letchworth
The important part, as I see it, is that it is helping to get out the message that North Hertfordshire has a rich, fascinating and diverse heritage. What we lack in romantic ruined castles, impressive Roman forts or enigmatic stone circles is more than made up for by discoveries from excavations or hidden behind modern shop frontages. Sometimes, it is just a matter of encouraging people to look at what they think is familiar with new eyes, pointing out the historic details they may have overlooked.
We often use specialist equipment in museums when caring for our collections, however, sometimes we find that everyday items can be put to use. Last week we were taught how a make-up sponge can be used to clean our feathered and furry collections.
Nicola Crompton, who trained in conservation at Lincoln University, came to show us how to smarten up our Natural History collection ready for display in the new museum.
Nicola showing Gill how to clean a dormouse
We began by wiping down the feathers (or fur) of our chosen specimen with either a cosmetic sponge or a special piece of cloth called a ‘Dust Bunny’. These create static which causes the dust and dirt to stick to them. It was amazing how effective they were and lovely to see the bright colours on the birds reappear.
Cleaning the feathers of a blackbird with a Dust Bunny
Gill also tackled a hedgehog, its very sharp quills meant that a different technique had to be used. She used a small brush to brush the dust off and into a vacuum cleaner. The end of the vacuum cleaner’s pipe is covered with a gauze (the gauze lets the small dust particles through but if any small piece of the object comes away during cleaning it is collected on the gauze and can then be kept and possibly reattached).
We then moved on to the eyes, beaks, feet and claws. We used a sticky substance called ‘Groomstick’ which is rolled into a small ball and stuck on the end of a cocktail stick. This can then be dabbed on to the eyes etc. and the dirt sticks to it. For eyes that were really dull we used a damp cotton wool swab and the eyes of all the animals were soon sparkling again.
Using a damp cotton wool swab to clean the eyes of a Tawny Owl
Finally, tweezers, pins and cotton wool swabs were used to very carefully tease feathers back into place where they had got twisted or misshapen and by the end of the day we had a table full of animals looking ready for their brand new display next year!
Many thanks to Nicola and our Natural History volunteer Bob Press for spending the day with us and sharing their expertise.
A guest post by Daisy Bradford, who did four weeks’ work experience with the Museum Service in August 2014:
This summer holiday just past, I spent four weeks doing voluntary with the North Herts Archaeology Service because I have a passion for archaeology and I plan to study it at university when I complete my A-Levels.
Daisy working at the Museums Resource Centre, Burymead Road in Hitchin
In my four weeks with the local archaeologists and museum workers in North Hertfordshire, I learned a lot of things and gained a lot of experience that will aid me in my future ambitions and also as useful life skills. I spent a lot of time with artefacts, holding them, observing them, classifying, photographing, cleaning and it really enabled me to have a close insight into the archaic culture of our ancestors that you won’t get from visiting a museum.
I also got to go on a few site visits to current commercial digs throughout the county, which was fascinating for me, who’d never seen a real dig let alone got to go on one and see how they are organised and all the amazing things the archaeologists find and it showed me how incredibly rich the history is just outside my front door.
This experience has been a great one for me and I’ve earned many skills and a deeper understanding of the study of Archaeology, as well as increasing my passion for it.
I’d also like to say thanks to Keith and Ros, who made sure I was doing all my work right and made the experience even more enjoyable.