Inside the Museum of London

This whole thing started a few years ago when a wedding dress came up at auction. Not being a wedding dress swooner I could nevertheless think of quite a few (entirely rational) reasons why the museum should acquire this particular example. For one thing it was made by Victor Stiebel, one of my favourite London couturiers. Secondly, we do not have enough of his creations (one never does) and they do not come up at auction very often. The dress also had an intriguing mystery inscription. We will get to that in a moment.

The gown is minute and with a bust measuring 76 cm (30 inches) and a waist of 61 cm (24 inches) pretty much conforms to a US size zero. It does not fit on any of our regular mannequins and when we recently photographed the dress I had to put it on the so-called ‘Petite’ from our regular bustform supplier. As you can see, the silhouette is not quite right – the dummy is more suitable for 19th century garments worn over corsets. Still, you get a rough idea.

In Ornament and Crime, published in 1908, the architect Adolf Loos rejected ‘the argument that ornament increases the pleasures of life of a cultivated person, or that it is beautiful. I prefer undecorated gingerbread [Loos was Austrian]. Modern people will understand.’ The wearer of this dress was definitely demonstrating her modernity, at least when viewed from the front, before turning around to expose the numerous velvet-covered buttons and loops that serve as fastening at the back and the wrists. I like this fusion of understatement – the simple cut of the high-necked dress, the subtle sheen of the off-white fabric – with hints of wealth and class. The velvet is made of silk, the train is definitely cathedral-length, the buttons and loops would have taken quite a bit of time to make, and, more importantly, had to be fastened by a someone else and thus suggest the presence of a maid. The no-frills design has to work – there are no beads to distract the eye, either from bad pattern-cutting or from the figure of the wearer. This faux-simplicity is hard to achieve and can command large sums when it works, as Victoria Beckham knows only two well.

The date of the gown was indicated partly by the label you can see at the top of this post. Victor Stiebel set up his house at 21 Bruton Street in January 1932. From October of the same year he was based at 22 Bruton Street, the address seen on our gown. The style of the dress suggested the early 1930s. Diana Mitford had worn something not entirely dissimilar when marrying Bryan Guinness in 1929. Stiebel’s press cutting books, which you can peruse in the Art & Design Archive of the V&A, contain a clipping from the Evening Standard of June 1932, showing the designer’s first publicised wedding dress – worn by Miss John Pearson at her marriage to Anthony Acton. The V&A proper holds the design and the dress itself, which is very, very similar to ours (there is no image of the dress on the website but this lovely Lenare photo shows the bride wearing it). Maybe it was this photo that inspired the wearer of our dress to go to Stiebel in the first place?

A few pages further on in Stiebel’s press books some clippings suggest a later date. The Daily Mirror reported in May 1936 that the couturier recommended June brides to avoid shiny materials: ‘He uses supple matt fabrics for gowns, which all fasten down the back with tiny buttons of self material’, but these gowns were made with loose, wide sleeves and very short trains. In 1938 Stiebel received much publicity for his use of the new artificial fibre Celanese. Victoria Chapelle informed the readers of the Yorkshire Post on 10 June 1938 (namechecking a previous incarnation of our very own museum!!!):

The typical bridal gown of this year – if one passes into the historic collection in the London Museum – will be notable, above all, for its dignity. [...] Elaborate pseudo-period gowns are now considered bad taste and the average bride refuses fussiness. [...] The traditional white satin has given away, in many cases, to the new silk jersey. This can be draped and it falls so perfectly that if the bride is slim and graceful it is the ideal fabric – though the worst possible choice if she is not.

Chapelle notes that jersey had been used by ‘nearly all the French designers’ and also by Stiebel for ‘one of the loveliest’ dresses he had ever made ‘with glove fitting sleeve and long serpentine train’.

We acquired our dress together with four other objects: a Greek/Egyptian tiara of cheap material – probably fancy dress, a head ornament made of wire in a shape popular in the 1920s and a traditional orange blossom wedding wreath. The fourth object, a very large piece of (silk) net or tulle had obviously been attached to the velvet-covered circle with the blossoms at some point (they were reunited for the above photo). None of these objects were particularly useful for dating the dress, which makes this a good moment to return to the above mentioned, pencilled note.

Sewn to one of the seam allowances of our gown is a narrow silk label with the name ‘Miss Levy’ written on it in pencil. I know that Levy is not the most unusual name but – come on – how many Miss Levy’s could possibly have been married in the 1930s? Well, it turns out, quite a few.

As so often, I started with The Times as the engagement/wedding of someone who could afford Stiebel was likely to be mentioned there. This is how I found Zoe and Audrey who married in 1936 and Doris Pamela who got hitched in 1937. There was also Hylda Levy who had confusingly married Ewart M. Levy in March 1932 but could be discounted as she was reported to have worn ‘a gown of parchment-coloured satin, the corsage embroidered in rosy pearls, with a full court train’ (9 March 1932). Annoyingly The Times only seems to mention couturiers when reporting court presentations. Nevertheless something, I don’t know quite what, made me think that the 1932 Hylda Levy wedding was somehow connected with our gown.

Hylda was the eldest daughter of Sir Albert and Lady (Gertrude) Levy ‘of Devonshire House, Piccadilly, and Elstead, Surrey’ as The Times had it. Sir Albert (born 1864) was the founder of the Ardath Tobacco company (originally called Albert Levy & Thomas) which was sold in 1925, apparently at great profit. In July 1936 Lady Levy (Hylda’s mother) attended court in a dress by Victor Stiebel and in March 1939 she did so again. Women of one family often seem to patronise the same designer so I thought I might have a lead.

Particularly when I saw the engagement of Mr R.R. Edgar, ‘younger son of Mr. and Mrs. E.S. Edgar’ and Esmé, the youngest daughter of Sir Albert and Lady Levy, being mentioned in The Times on 20 August 1935. Usually a report of the wedding follows not much later but in this case there was nothing but silence.

I changed tack and – with the help of the auctioneer – managed to get in touch with the seller of the dress. She turned out to be the owner of a wedding dress shop where our gown had been displayed for about fifteen years before reaching the Museum (I guess you have to make sure a shop full of white dresses is being kept super-clean). The seller remembered buying the gown from an antique dealer friend but did not know where he had obtained it. She had been told that the dress was related to the jewellers H. Samuels. Remember this last bit of information and also that 2008, the year when we purchased the dress, minus 15 takes us to about 1993.

I cannot quite recall what happened next. A lot was going on in the museum at the time, which was probably a good thing. We were refurbishing the ‘costume’ store and were also working on the Galleries of Modern London so our quest for the elusive bride could only be followed up intermittently. But little by little we, volunteer and I, pieced together a story.

Esmé wed Robert Rex Samuel Edgar, son of Edgar Samuel Edgar (died 1933) and Ethel Julia née Cohen (1871-1922) on 19 December 1935. The marriage brought together two very prominent Jewish families and took place at the West London Synagogue, rather than the usual society venue St Margaret’s Church. Not having easy access to the Jewish Chronicle we managed to enlist the generous help of a colleague at the Jewish Museum who found this short announcement published on 27 December 1935:

Marriages
EDGAR LEVY. – On the 19th of December, 1935 at the West London synagogue, Berkley Street, W1 by the Rev H.F. Reinhart and the Rev Vivian Simmons, Robin Rex Edgar, of 48, Albert court SW7, younger son of the late Mr and Mrs E.S.Edgar, to Esmé, youngest daughter of Sir Albert and Lady Levy, of Devonshire House, W1 and Westbrook, Elstead, Surrey.

Sadly no images and no description of the bride’s dress. But it turned out that Robert (he must have changed his name from Robin at some point) Samuel ran the jewellers H. Samuels with his brother Gilbert until the late 1970s. Esmé survived Robert, who died in 1981, and when she herself passed away in November 1988 left her considerable fortune of £14 million to various charities. It seems her effects were auctioned at the time, which fits in with the account of the wedding dress shop owner who remembered getting the dress in around 1993. (If you know anything about auction, please get in touch!)

I very much would like to think that the dress was Esmé’s but I do not have absolute proof at the time of writing this entry. One of Esmé’s grandson’s has been on the lookout for a wedding photo but without any luck so far (there must be one somewhere!). He very, very kindly emailed me some family photos and allowed them to be used here. I could not believe my eyes when I opened the files. The Levys were one stylish family!

The first picture shows Sir Albert, Lady Gertrude and their daughters Hylda and Esme during a Mediterranean cruise taken between January and March 1929. Hylda is the one wearing a ‘corsage embroidered in rosy pearls’ at her wedding in 1932. The third sister, Vera, had already married in 1928, which explains her absence. The second photo shows the family playing golf at Manedelieu near Cannes in January 1930 (I might – just might – consider taking up golf if that means I can wear knitwear like that.)

I leave you with one last family photo which demonstrates that Esmé could easily have fitted into our tiny dress. It shows her with her father at Westbrook House in Elstead, Surrey, some time during the 1930s. She must have been a stunning bride.

The story of how the Museum of London put the recordings online began in 2008 when St Neots Museum offered us a Columbia Home Grand Graphophone phonograph dated around 1900 and 26 wax cylinders which David Brown, Cromwell Wall’s grandson and a local resident, had donated to it.

On each cylinder’s cardboard box was a carefully handwritten description of its contents, the date on which it was recorded, and the location where it was recorded. The many references to Friern Barnet and New Southgate led the St Neots Museum staff to believe they should return to London. (This incidentally is how local and social history museums – including the Museum of London – work. We tell the stories of our local areas and people, and will often pass enquiries about donations on to other museums if they may be a better match.)

The group was – even without access to the recorded sounds the cylinders held – a powerful link to another time and past lives. The objects were also beautiful to look at – the phonograph in its ornate, turned wooden case and the cylinder boxes with their curled hand-lettered descriptions. Two of the boxes were particularly pretty, printed with delicate roses and detailed instructions on how to handle the fragile cylinders inside. With David Brown’s kind agreement, we were delighted to accept St Neots Museum’s offer.

Next we wanted to find out whether any of the recordings on the wax cylinders had survived, and if they had, to transfer them into digital format so they could be preserved for the future. With its experience and expertise in this area, the British Library Sound Archive was the natural choice to do this for us.

Four years – and several Museum of London exhibitions – later, in spring 2012, we took the cylinders to the British Library in St Pancras.

There, Nigel Bewley, British Library Sound Archive Operations Manager, skilfully transferred the recordings for us. He successfully transferred clear sound recordings from 24 of the 26 cylinders (one of the cylinders was blank; the recording on another could barely be heard.)

Back at the Museum of London Bill Lowry, our Digital Collections (Preservation) Manager, worked on the digitised recordings, further enhancing them ready to go online.

One of the most enjoyable parts of researching the recordings was meeting Cromwell Wall’s descendants. In autumn 2012 with the oral historian and broadcaster Alan Dein I met David Brown and his family, and David’s sister Daphne Brown and cousin Alan White – both also of course Cromwell’s grandchildren.

From left to right David and Joyce Brown, their grandson Zac Jordan, granddaughter Layla Jordan, daughter Marina Jordan-Rugg and son-in-law Terry Rugg

Alan captured the family’s thoughts and feelings on hearing their grandfather’s, aunts’ and uncles’, great-grandfather’s and even great-great-grandfather’s voices.

The family’s generosity and enthusiasm in sharing their family’s history, their memories of their grandfather Cromwell, and showing us family photographs and documents (which you can see on this blog) have enriched the recordings in a very unique and personal way.

I was struck by how faith, and making music together, both so central to Cromwell’s and his family’s lives, remain important to David and Daphne and the younger members of the family. When we visited, Cromwell’s great-great-grandchildren Layla and Zac sang ‘Minstrel Boy’ accompanied on the harp and piano by their mother Marina (David’s daughter) and grandmother Joyce. This was the same song that Cromwell had recorded his seven year old son Leslie (Layla’s and Zac’s great-great uncle) singing almost a hundred and ten years ago in 1904.

From left to right, Joyce, Zac, Marina and Layla

In December I had the pleasure of meeting more of Cromwell’s descendants when Pallab Ghosh, Science Correspondent for BBC News, visited the Museum of London to interview the family . Cromwell’s grandsons Edward Pumfrey, Brian Wall and Oliver Wall and great-grandson Philip Wall joined David, Daphne, Alan and Marina to listen to the recordings and chat about what they mean to them.

From left to right, standing Edward Pumfrey, Marina Jordan-Rugg, Terry Rugg, David Brown, Brian Wall, Philip Wall, Alan White; seated, Sally Wall, Daphne Brown and Oliver Wall

There have also been some very unexpected and special outcomes of putting Cromwell’s recordings online. Other family members have contacted us and we’ve been able to put them in contact with David, Daphne, Alan, Brian, Oliver and Edward. One gentleman recognised in the face of Hampden Wall (aged about 19, standing on the left in the Wall family photograph taken in 1916), a colleague whose surname was Wall who had served with him in Malaysia in the 1960s. We forwarded his email to the family and he has now made contact with his colleague from 50 years ago (who is indeed a Wall descendant!) who now lives in New Zealand!

We’ve also been told that Cromwell’s recordings of the bells of Christ Church, Southgate, may be the earliest recordings of English church bell ringing.

And finally, since we put the recordings online we have only heard about one earlier Christmas home recording, a phonograph recording held in the National Library of Norway from Christmas Eve 1901.

If you know of any earlier home recordings, we would love to hear from you.

Blog by Julia Hoffbrand, curator of social and working history.

Whilst Londoners today are all-too-familiar with the intermittent disruption of street demonstrations and protests, 100 years ago the battle between the authorities and militant women demanding the right to vote almost threatened to overwhelm daily life in the capital.

By 1913 an escalation of Suffragette militancy including bombings and arson was causing huge chaos. Constantly outwitting the police, Suffragette protestors were popping up at all sorts of high profile events and iconic landmarks. Covert, undercover tactics ensured the authorities were always taken by surprise. And so it occurred that at 10 o’clock on this very day in 1913, two Suffragettes managed to slip unnoticed into the Monument, trap the attendants in their office and climb the 311 steps to the top of the column commemorating the Great Fire of 1666.

Emerging onto the balcony the women unfurled the purple, white and green flag of the Women’s Social and Political Union and tied a banner reading ‘Death or Victory’ to the railings. They then released hundreds of propaganda flyers onto the street below.

Crowds gathered to witness the capture of the Monument by two suffragettes, Miss Spark and Mrs Shaw.

This press image shows that the crowd drawn to the spectacle of ‘women behaving badly’ were primarily working men including a number of Billingsgate Market fish porters identified by their tarred leather hats. There can be no doubt the crowd would have been heckling and mocking both the police and the Suffragettes as the shambles unfolded, neither group being particularly loved or respected by the working man.

Finally order was restored and London’s working day returned to normal. As for the Suffragettes – Gertrude Shaw and Ethel Spark – they were released without charge, job done. Not only had their protest successfully caused the desired disruption and achieved maximum publicity for the campaign it also, according to the Votes for Women newspaper, added one more success ‘to the lists of triumphs of female ingenuity’.

By Beverley Cook, Curator, Social & Working History

It’s been a busy start to March at the Archaeological Archive. Or rather, we’ve been busy taking the archive collections out of the stores and back to where they were first discovered.

Our Unearthing Bromley project is revisiting the archaeology that was dug up in Keston and bringing it back to its borough. We started our roadshow with a pop-up stand at The Glades shopping centre and had a fantastic weekend chatting to shoppers.

“I had no idea there was this much stuff in Bromley”

The excavations revealed a history going back to the early Iron Age running right through to the Saxons with three centuries of Roman occupation in between. Whilst the dig itself uncovered the history of the site, our events at the Glades uncovered the connections to the past that people still have today

“I remember this. I remember when the first dig was going on in the 60s. I took my girlfriend down there to see what was going on!”

“I live right near Jackass Lane (where the excavations took place). And you’re telling me that all these things are Roman? Really? That’s fantastic.”

Our team of Archaeological Ambassadors chatted to over 2000 people, sharing the history of the area and encouraging shoppers to touch the past.

“To get my hands on something almost 2000 years old… Wow…”

However, this was more than just your standard piece of outreach. Our guys were actively encouraging people to join in with the kind of collections care work that usually only takes place behind the scenes, back at the archive. Shoppers suddenly became absorbed in repacking pieces of Roman pottery. It’s a simple process transferring a sherd of pottery from an old to a new bag and writing out a museum label.  Yet, this simple method is an important and effective way of preserving the past.

“There you go. We’ve become part of the Museum of London” (Mum to daughter after packing bags of pottery)

This type of event is known as Public Archaeology and it pretty much does what it says; sharing archaeology with members of the public, getting people involved with their local heritage. Some visitors knew lots about the area already, some none. Our oldest visitor remembered the site being dug up, our youngest couldn’t even speak yet.

Ultimately though, it’s about giving people some enjoyment out of the past. And judging by one girl’s response below, we like to think we nailed this. Over to Grace:

“On 8\3\13 my mum and I stayed at the Museum of London stand in the Glades, Bromley for 2 hours as we were so fascinated by the wonderful artefacts that had been found in Keston. I was lucky enough to hold and pack real Roman pottery! My favourite piece was part of a handle which was quite rough and lumpy because it had been made with crushed oyster shells! I cannot wait to go to the Archives of the Museum of London and see more pieces of history”

#UnearthingBromley continues on Wednesdays at the Bromley Museum and Fridays at Tesco Extra, Orpington, throughout March, culminating with a celebration of local history at the Bromley Museum on Saturday 6 April : www.museumoflondon.org.uk/bromley

In May this year an exhibition called Estuary opens at Museum of London Docklands. The exhibition is of works by contemporary artists who have been inspired by the outer reaches of the Thames where the river meets the sea. In advance of Estuary, my colleagues and I decided to explore the region that is the source of inspiration for the art works that will be displayed.

We set off from Fenchurch Street station in the City, a station that looks all the world like it has been plucked from a Victorian child’s toy box, and set down amongst the glittering steel and glass towers of 21st century London. Our objective was to traverse the north bank of the Thames into Essex, and to then walk over one mile out into the waters of the estuary along Southend Pier, the longest pleasure pier in the world.

We were advised by station staff to board a train to Shoeburyness, even though curiously it did not show Southend as a destination on the departure board, and we set off. First Limehouse then West Ham, then Barking, and so eastwards. It was a bitterly cold day and snow lay patchily over the marshlands of Rainham,and the Chafford Hundred as we breached the M25 motorway that rings London. Our guide for the day mentioned that we were following in the footsteps of Daniel Defoe, who had taken a similar tour almost 300 years ago, and I later found this quotation:

I set out, the 3d of April, 1722, going first eastward, and took what I think, I may very honestly call a circuit in the very letter of it; for I went down by the coast of the Thames thro’ the marshes or hundreds, on the south-side… passing Bow-Bridge, where the county of Essex begins…

As the industrial river buildings of Tilbury became more sporadic so the hulk of a derelict factory appeared through our carriage window. This together with a statue is all that remains of the Bata shoe factory at East Tilbury. Built in the modernist style in 1932, this ‘Bataville’ was one of many model company towns complete with housing and entertainments for factory workers that were created by the Czech industrialist, Tomas Bat’a, who encouraged Czech workers to relocate to this part of the estuary. In its heyday 4,000 workers lived, worked and played in Bataville, before it finally closed its doors in 2005.

Gradually the industrialised landscape gave way to wide expanses of mud flats that stretched beyond sight into an evanescent haze of mist and weak sunshine. Leigh-on-Sea hove into view, its little railway station framed by cockle sheds and fishing smacks resting on the mudbanks, the estuary waters, now at low tide, a world away. The paintings of Michael Andrews came to mind, the wash and swirl of muddy brown and shaded blue evoking the expanses of the open estuary. How different a landscape from London was now before us! The mists would prevent us seeing the spookily-named Shivering Sands Maunsell Fort – a series of towers built out into the waters of the estuary in 1943 as an early warning system against invasion and now derelict watch keepers. Stephen Turner’s ‘artistic exploration in isolation’ led him to live in one of the towers for six weeks and the resultant work will be part of Estuary.

And finally we reached Southend Central. After a short walk to the seafront we stood above and in front of the pier, which stretched out before us into the sea. The stiff onshore breeze numbed the face and hands as we gazed down onto an amusement park hibernating for the winter. This was exactly the prospect that Simon Roberts captured in his photograph of Southend Pier from his series Pierdom, his ongoing survey of the pleasure piers of England. Roberts extraordinary image however makes Southend look more Miami than the Thames estuary.

It is a long walk to the end of Southend Pier. We were alone and from time to time paused to look back at the receding shoreline. It was not difficult to imagine how the estuary has been an inspiration for artists as varied as Joseph Turner and Charles Dickens, and how it continues to fascinate artists today.

We completed the journey by returning ‘the Essex way’ – that is on the narrow gauge railway that runs the length of the pier, but not before paying a visit to the new cultural centre that opened in 2012 at the end of the pier. Designed by the Swedish firm White arkitekter, the Centre is a splendid new addition that enables artists and performers to take their work, literally, into the estuary.

I imagine that this place we call estuary, an area that defies the drawing of boundaries but nevertheless is held together by the contra movements of the river and sea, will always escape the grasp of London – and yet be perpetually yoked to it. This vagueness perhaps, is what makes it an appealing muse for artists and a fit subject for the Museum’s exhibition.

Right now, as this blog is being written, the skull of a roman dog is sitting in a display case at the Glades Shopping Centre in Bromley. Yet, this is no ordinary dog. It’s one whose history and circumstances of death are surrounded in mystery.

In 1984 as archaeologists uncovered remains of  a Roman villa in Keston, they came across a large circular feature; larger than your average pit, as they removed layers of soil, extraordinary discoveries began to be revealed. Having already dug a depth of around two metres, the archaeologists suddenly found the shaft’s first animal bones; sheep, dog, ox and piglet. The bones weren’t your usual food waste, but instead were almost complete skeletons, albeit jumbled up. Beneath these, the actual first complete skeleton was found; that of a pig.

The archaeologists dug further. More bones appeared. Dog, dog, sheep, another dog, more pigs, dog, dog, dog. All complete skeletons. All seemingly placed in position, rather than being thrown in or naturally dying.

The archaeologists continued. More dog bones surfaced. What was this pit? It size and scale like no other on this four acre site. This shaft almost four metres in diameter and now reaching a depth of around four and a half metres. How deep would it go? What could they possibly find next?

Horse.

And not just the one. Two complete horses, deliberately laid around the edge of the shaft along with the complete skeleton of an ox. Down further still and more skeletons; dogs, oxen, sheep, pigs. When they finally reached the bottom, in the centre of the pit surrounded by the skeletal remains was a single, broken, iron spearhead.

So what was going on?

Well, in times of puzzlement like this, the archaeologist tends to reach for their safety word and cry ‘ritual!’ Truth be told, archaeology sometimes can’t provide us with a definitive answer. However, there are some interesting points to note which, with a little bit of logical imagination, perhaps help us understand the practices of these Keston inhabitants.

First, these animals were almost certainly placed in position, rather than falling into the shaft. Second, the people here were agricultural farmers, meaning that they were both relying on a good crop for survival and would have had access to several kinds of animals. Third, Romans are known to make sacrifices to their gods.

Sacrificing sheep and oxen were part of the ritual practice in the worship of the goddess Magna Mater –  the Earth Mother. In Autumn, to mark the end of agricultural and military campaigning seasons, horses were sacrificed to the God Mars. Finally, in April, there was the Robigalia, where dog sacrifices were carried out to protect fields of grain from disease.

Although no solid evidence that these animals were sacrificed to these deities for these purposes, I find it curious that these connections can be made. Perhaps we’ll never know for certain why these animals died, but almost 2000 years later, their story lives on.

Certain remains will be on display at the Bromley Museum on Saturday 6 April as part of the Unearthing Bromley project.

The Roman Forum. The centre of public life. The nucleus of commercial affairs. Whether you lived in ancient Rome, ancient Lugdunum (modern Lyon to you and me) or our very own Londinium, the Forum was the place to meet your mates, find out about all the latest trends, fashions and social news and of course, shop.

So what would be today’s equivalent of a Forum? I’d like to put forward, the Shopping Mall.

Like the Roman Forum it has shops and market stalls, it has places to meet your friends, it has places to find out the latest trends/fashion and (at least in the commercial sense) news. And soon one shopping centre will also have Roman archaeology.

.

What better place to take artefacts from Keston Roman villa than to Bromley’s Glades Shopping Centre.

What did residents in Bromley eat 2000 years ago? Why did a dish made in France end up in Roman Bromley? And why were dead dogs important?

You can find the answers to these questions and more from Sat 2nd March at The Glades, in the heart of Bromley’s town centre.

But why stop there? This is Public Archaeology and we want you to get up close and take a unique look at Bromley’s history; to touch the pots that were made and used in the area two millennia ago; to sniff them should you wish (we draw a line at tasting). These artefacts are London’s history, London’s heritage and whilst the Museum of London looks after them, they are yours to enjoy.

So come see them – Friday 8th, Saturday 9th & Sunday 10th March at Bromley’s ‘Modern Forum’. Meet our archaeology ambassadors and ask them how you can get involved in preserving Bromley’s ancient past.

The link between Bromley & Ancient Rome

In 43AD the Roman army crossed the Channel and began their conquest of Britain. Within a decade the area around the Thames had transformed into a city which would grow, be attacked, be fortified, be burnt, be rebuilt, expand and evolve. However, this isn’t the story I’m here to tell (that’s what we have the Roman Gallery for). This blog is interested in the lives beyond the city.

The outer boroughs of London have some amazing archaeological remains that shed light on what was going on in Roman Britain whilst London was developing. Roads led out in all directions such as the Westward one we’re hoping to find this summer in Hounslow (want to get involved? Find out more here: Excavate Syon). As you get further away from the city, you start to come across impressive temples (like the one in Greenwich) pottery production centres (such as Haringey’s Highgate pottery) and in the South-East, villa complexes. Our previous volunteer projects have looked at the finds from the roman villa at Beddington in Sutton but our current focus is a bit further East, exploring the London borough of Bromley.

Bromley is London’s largest borough. In 1967 excavations began at a site in Keston at an area know as Lower Warbank, where archaeologists from the Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit discovered the remains of a Romano-British farmstead. It was one of the largest excavations to take place in the South East, and involved over 500 volunteers.

Their findings were incredible: Iron Age settlers had been living in the area since around 600BC and gradually evolved the site into a small farmstead. As Londinium became an established city, the site embraced roman influences and slowly transformed into a villa complex with three large wooden buildings surrounding a rectangular courtyard, later to be replaced by a masonry building of about 10 rooms. The estate seems to have lasted until about AD 400, with farming and industry providing grain and pottery that was traded with Londinium and the wider empire. Following the Romans, Saxon settlers set up home, the last to occupy the site up until around AD 550.

There were some pretty special artefacts discovered such as ceramic wheels used to decorate pottery, jewellery that would have adorned those that lived here and complete animal skeletons seemingly buried as part of a religious custom. All these objects and more are stored at the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive, however, since they were found over 40 years ago our methods of storage have advanced and these objects are in need of some attention. So that’s just what we’re going to do and we’re doing it in two ways.

First, we’re aiming to get your attention fixed on these objects. Throughout March, we’re taking  2000 year old pottery back to Bromley and will be sharing these items with today’s residents. You can get up close and touch the clay that was shaped into a roman cooking pot. You can run your fingers over 2000 year old fingerprints left behind on a special mixing bowl. If you really want to you can sniff the objects too (lots of people like doing this – I’m not sure why.)

Second, you can help us out and join our team of volunteers as they show you how together we can transform the way these objects are stored and make sure they’re preserved for years to come.

Come along and find out more at the Glades Shopping Centre from Friday 8th – Sunday 10th March; Tesco Extra, Orpington on Friday 15th & Friday 22nd March; and every Wednesday at the Bromley Museum, 6th, 13th, 20th & 27th March.

Victorian Valentine cards were experimental and eye catching. At this time of year London stationers put on enormous, impressive displays of valentine cards in their shop windows. When the pre-paid penny post system came in valentines could be posted anonymously, and London’s stationers experimented with thousands of ideas for cards. London valentines were so popular that they were exported to the USA.  London produced valentines that were romantic, humorous, cryptic and even insulting.  Some were even a precursor to LOLcats. Some were downright weird.  A huge variety of cards were designed for all tastes and budgets. The Museum of London has a large collection that includes some really unusual examples, like this roller skating cupid.

"Ere CUPID wore the nimble wheel, Which supersedes the glittering steel, Yet scarcely proves so safe a keel, And went a-RINKING He launched a dart and wounded me, My sweet, the bolt was tipped with thee, And so I met it lovingly, Without once SHRINKING"

By the late nineteenth century, when this card was made, roller skating was a big craze in London. ‘Rinkomania’ struck the capital, and roller rinks opened around London. Skates were advertised for children and adults, and the roller rinks were a new opportunity for men and women to socialize. One observer described how “In the use of these wheeled skates some of the men have gained great proficiency, but I saw no fancy skating amongst the ladies” (from The Graphic, April 1875, source) – it certainly can’t have been easy performing tricks in skates and dresses. Despite the difficulties, The Graphic’s reporter also wrote that ‘no-one was so ill-bred as to tumble.’ Perhaps this card was for someone who did not tumble, but fell in love at the rink instead.