In the run up to our Pleasure Garden Ball event at the Museum of London on Tuesday 14 February, we’ve put together a quick blog post that should tell you everything you need to know about the pleasure garden!

As London became more built up in the 17th and 18th centuries, Londoners began to need open spaces to relax in. Pleasure gardens were built at the edge of the city and were privately run. The most famous were the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

Vauxhall, 1785 by Thomas Rowlandson

Pleasure gardens competed for visitors, vying with each other to offer evermore exciting entertainments. Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens offered a wide variety of entertainment, including lion-tamers, trampoline clowns, fortune tellers, ventriloquists, monkeys, dogs, jugglers, horses who danced to a waltz and fire walkers.

Tournaire's Equestrians, Vauxhall Gardens, 1846

Costumes from the Museum of London’s pleasure gardens

The Museum of London’s pleasure gardens

Starting to look at art

During this week’s Many East End session, we asked members of youth organisation Tolerance in Diversity what they thought was the most significant event in the East End in the last two years. I’ll reveal their answer in a bit, but first a little about the session. (As we were starting to examine, and create, art this week, you’ll see the photos have taken on a post-modern feel).

Selecting photos

Artist Sarah Carne started off by asking everyone about the photos they had taken in the galleries last week to represent their favourite East End place, person, image and thing. Collectively, the group discussed each photo and sorted them into three categories: Definitely representative, Definitely not representative and Not sure. Strong strands started to emerge amongst the images, the strongest of which was family. Others included Canary Wharf, The Thames, water more generally and modern architecture. One participant had chosen ‘Turkoman’ to represent her favourite East End person, her brother. She said Turkoman reminded her of him when he was little dressing up in girls clothes and in her words, ‘being a girl’.

Turkoman

The ‘Definitely representative ‘ and ‘Not Sure’ photos were then gathered and saved, and participants will be adding them to their project portfolios.

Sarah then introduced us to her art.

Sarah Carne - Loving her Yugo

Sarah explained that she  does a lot of work in film and photography and that, in her words, ‘My art is all about me’. As well as showing us interesting commissions she has done on a variety of topics she also introduced us to what it would appear is the love of her life – her Yugo. The amazing Yugo has been photographed, written upon, Letrasetted (if that’s a word), converted into a cinema, use to ferry people between exhibitions, travelled ‘home’ to Yugoslavia, rotted, molded, broken down and vandalised. And now Sarah is  writing a musical about it. The Yugo is Sarah’s. As art, it represents her and reflects her. The Yugo also provided the subject matter for a series of photos, which when shown in quick succession, convert into a mini film. The combination of self, and the creation of film, was our inspiration for our next task.

Personalising a peg

Sarah gave everyone a peg and asked them to customise it to represent them. One person simply added their name using Letraset, followed by a semi-colon to represent the fact that he does a lot of computer programming. (The semi-colon occurs alot in computer programming, we were told!) Other pegs were converted into a girl with little pigtails and a shark. Others were covered in letters and stickers and one was not touched in itself, but attached to a Bangladeshi flag, to represent nationality.

Loving the peg

So, you may be wondering how all this relates to most significant event in the East End in the last two years. Well…

Sarah explained that the customised pegs, and other pegs if necessary were going to be ’brought to life’ in a quick film to represent that event, whatever the group thought it may be. So, a discussion began on possible contenders for this event. Suggestions included:

1. Construction of the Olympics site
2. Losing the bid to host the World Cup
3. English Defensive League march this summer
4. Construction of Westfield
5. Riots in Hackney

After some to-ing and fro-ing the group came to a consensus that, in their opinion, the most significant event in terms of impact on their East End was the English Defensive League march. Several of the group members had been there on the day, having joined lots of people in coming out against the march. In the midst of the tension, the EDL coach broke down, just outside the East London Mosque, and a previously unpredicted flash point erupted.  You can read more about the event here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14779772

So, using pegs, and a healthy slug of creativity, the group created a short film of the events of the day. We do have the film footage but haven’t had a chance to do anything post production yet so a photo will have to do!

Us and Them - In Pegs

And that concluded last night’s session. I’m sure we will be going back to this topic, and looking in further depth at why the group felt that this is the most significant East End event in the last two years. Because of the public sector strike we are not meeting next week, so the group are meeting independently. Leading on from examining what their East End is, they are going to be considering how they would represent it artistically. Their ‘pitch’ is going to be presented to the curator of View Tube in Stratford on 7th December. Watch this space…

Team bonding

Down at Docklands, we are working on a new concept for the part of the museum that looks at the Docks since 1945. The working title of this project is Many East Ends.

In order to tell as rich a history as possible in the new gallery, Docklands Strategy Manager, George Young, is doing lots of creative colloborations with all types of groups and individuals. One of these groups is Tolerance in Diversity, an organisation based in Limehouse led by young people for young people. TiD work to reduce discrimination and prejudice by delivering training and running events throughout London. They have worked with the museum before and we have invited them back for their input into the concept for Many East Ends.

Why the long face?

The process started last night, under the guidance of artist Sarah Carne. www.sarahcarne.org

Sarah asked everyone to think of  their favourite East End person, place, image and thing.  Everyone was given a video camera and asked to give their four examples to camera. This has delivered some very interesting footage that we hope to put online in the future, together with other footage as the project progresses.

After filming, and armed with a camera, everyone was asked to find examples of items in the gallery that connected to, or represented, their four examples. Here is a snap shot of some of them.

Canary Wharf model

Bridge for DLR

East End family

Bomb by William Ware

We then started talking and thinking about what everyone wanted to get out of the project.

Thinking of ideas

Sarah asked everyone to answer the following questions:

What skills to I bring to the project?
What do I want to get from the project?
What could stand in my way?
What skills do you need in the East End?

Hard at work

Lastly, Sarah led discussion on what elements of the East End would need to be included in the gallery when it was redeveloped, based on the thoughts from the evening’s activity. On initial discussion, the following ideas and elements were put forward.

• Politics
• Immigration
• Buskers
• A working DLR train
• A mock tube station – not Bermondsey
• Gangs
• The River Thames

Developing, expanding and honing this list will form a key element of this project as it continues towards Christmas and into the New Year. Next week we will be returning to it to see what ideas have changed or grown. We will also be looking at how far back in time the Many East Ends gallery should go, as well as having more fun with cameras, creating more bunting (as seen in the background of the photos) and adding more to our project portfolio books.

Recently our Learning Project Manager Isabel was approached by a group of 15 visually impaired prospective visitors, who along with their helpers, were interested in coming along to the Museum of London.

Add-Learning group in their second day following a tour of our Medieval gallery

With Isabel’s help, hosts Daniela, Arna and Ed created a bespoke object handling session using original artefacts tailored to the groups needs.

The group consisted of retired adults from various backgrounds, all very knowledgeable about British history, who once a year arrange a visit to a different city, and visit a particular museum.

This year, they arranged a visit to London and naturally, they chose the Museum of London to brush up on their knowledge of the capital.

The group requested three tours and three object handling sessions in our Roman, Medieval and War, Plague and Fire galleries.

A visitor feeling a small head of a saint from a Medieval monastery

For the Great Fire of London day they had a real brick to touch from Pudding Lane (dug from the excavation of 1979), a medieval bowling ball, and a bell from a post you would tie your horse to whenever you rode to London.

Arna also showed a money box which was used in London’s theatres dating from the 17th century and a toy gun that could apparently fire for real – and hurt people in those times.

Money boxes were used in 17th century theatres as we know that spectators would regularly watch one act and then decide to remain or leave; if they stayed they had to pay a fee. In the audience there were a lot of people carrying such money boxes in order to collect the cash from them. Once filled up these ‘assistants’ would then take the boxes to the office to count what collected. That’s why we still call it the ‘box office’.

Arna shows a round wooden piece, one of the mystery objects used during the handling session

I was present in the galleries during the tours as well as in our Clore Learning Centre for the object handling sessions and was not surprised to have received an excellent report from hosts and visitors alike. Ed told me that the whole experience was fun and interesting and the feedback from the group universally positive. Even the three lovely guide dogs seemed to have enjoyed it!

Ed answering challening questions on Roman artefacts

The part that they all enjoyed most were the handling sessions because it’s an experience that really allows you examine objects used and held many years ago and to connect with the past.

We have been trained to deliver tours to visually impaired visitors and we offer free daily VocalEyes tours whenever they are requested. This experience however is entirely different. Daniela, for example, learnt a new tour for the occasion and I am sure they gained some good knowledge of how to lead such groups around the Museum in future.

Daniela presents a 11th century horseshoe. Horses at that time were very small, this shoe would fit a modern pony!

In collaboration with our Learning Department we are now considering developing the experience further so that it can be offered to other adult groups and children.

Visit our web page to find out more about our facilities for visitors with impairments.

I will write a new post soon on something absolutely special happening in November.

Keep reading my blog. Ciao!

Giusy

In this post I focus on the workshops developed by my colleagues Stephanie and Joanna.

Stephanie has run a Victorian object handling workshop which has looked specifically at objects found in the kitchen and to do with food and drink, for example butter pats and toast forks.

During the session she used pictures to illustrate how kitchens have changed over the time and she loved to talk about different technologies and appliances that you find in the kitchen. For the kids to take home, she has offered some examples of Victorian Recipes to try.
She has enjoyed a lot doing this workshop, because it allowed children to actually handle real Victorian objects. One of her tricks was not to tell the kids what the objects were so to make them guess. It was nice I am sure to see their expressions when discovering what the objects were used for, for example when it came to a very unusual bottle opener.

She also enjoyed doing the workshop, because the Victorian period is one of her favourite periods in British history and she definitely loves cooking! I can testify to this as the great quantity of cupcakes frequently baked for the Hosts team made their way to the staff room straight from her kitchen oven!

Joanna’s workshop is called “The Glassmaker Apprentice” and focuses on families with children aged 3+. Her workshop is based on the long and fascinating history of stained glass work pieces, with a particular focus on windows.

She told me that the very first examples are from ancient Egypt, later Greece and Rome, but its most height of fashion was during the dark medieval times.
Nowadays this fashion is coming back usually in smaller forms like elements in doors or art works in public buildings, galleries, churches and very tiny forms like window decorations and sun catchers.
On the workshop day Joanna and the families work at making sun catchers.

There are several shapes to choose from and they use brightly foils to imitate glass. To begin with, children and parents are encouraged to draw a flower or other designs on a black cardboard and then they cut off all the holes. For younger children Johanna offers already made models. The following and easy step is to glue various pieces of coloured foils to the back side of the sun catcher and finally attach a string so to be hung in a window. Have a look, I love the dove one!

You can join Johanna’s  next  workshop on Sunday 13 November.  I hope to see you there!

My colleague Ed has a true mania for mail making. He has always been fascinated and he has been doing it for nearly five years now. If you walk to the galleries you will never find him without a small piece in his hands. I am not joking.

He wrote a dissertation on the topic and discovered that despite the fact mail was used for nearly two thousand years, very little work has been done on it. As an archaeologist it is his belief that the best way to understand an ancient technology is to have a go at making or using it. So now he runs the workshop at the Museum of London demonstrating to the public how mail was made and sharing the secrets that are locked within it.

He told me that in the past weapons and armour were not viewed the way they are now, they were integral to society, they had magical powers, names and were status symbols.
Mail armour was one of the most expensive armours around; it is very labour intensive, taking him around 7 months to make a complete shirt alone. It involves linking each ring through four others, and if made properly, riveting them shut to prevent them opening. In a complete mail shirt there can be as many as 28,000 rings, each one formed and riveted by hand.

His research into mail and its manufacture has brought to light a number of interesting new facts: such as how was mail made to fit the wearer? What sort of quality is the metal that mail is made from? What do these facts then tell us about the people making and wearing mail? When Ed does his workshop the public gets the chance to see and touch complete mail garments as well as have a go at riveting a ring or two.

The hope is that through this the public gain some new understanding of this interesting aspect of history, plus its fun! As the workshops progress visitors will see how the rings they have riveted become part of the weave of a new mail coif, a form of head protection that will be put in one of our gallery prop boxes for future visitors to try on.

Be sure to visit our Medieval Gallery to find out more.

Why not Join Ed for his next workshop this Sunday (7 August)!

Once the building work was complete the boxes could be returned to the store but in turn needed to be located back on to different shelves and the inventory updated.  With the return of the boxes and the gaining of some new space within the store there was an opportunity for a rationalising of the space and re grouping of the boxes from the sites currently curated by the museum. As there are over 17,000 individuals curated that equates to a very substantial number of boxes and a major task.

The moving of the boxes and rationalising of the space within the store needed to take place in July in order to be ready to accept more material from other sites.

The endeavour of moving several hundred boxes to new locations in the store was a task that our curators would need assistance with to be able to complete and achieve the target. Most opportunely help was at hand in the guise of three willing work experience volunteers: Liam, Amelia and Kate.

Jelena Bekvalac, Curator Human Osteology explains more…

We had the pleasure here at the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology during two weeks in July to have three lovely work experience students with us, Liam Bateson, Amelia Stephenson and Kate Marrion. They were all extremely helpful, interested and really ably assisted in our grand task of rationalising the boxed skeletal material in the rotunda, re-labelling boxes and up dating the inventory.

Amelia and Kate although here with us for a shorter time aided in moving material from the lab back to the rotunda, assisted in replacing boxes on to the correct shelves, labelling boxes and listing new locations of the boxes which, are integral to the up keep of the inventory so we know where all the boxes are correctly located.

Liam and Kate were also able to participate in a session about object handling and so saw another aspect and objects in the museum. With the assistance of our plastic cast skeleton Dr W we were able to go through the names of the bones in the skeleton and how they articulate with one another. They all proved to be keen learners and had very good osteological aptitude, young osteologists in the making!

Liam was at the forefront of box moving and relocation being involved for a longer time period. Additionally to moving all of the boxes a record of their new locations had to be listed for the inventory to be updated and new location labels on the boxes. Once again Liam, Amelia and Kate rose to the challenge and diligently labelled the boxes and listed the new locations.  The task took considerable effort, was physically demanding when moving the boxes around and often very dusty. The boxes have now all been relocated, space created and new inventory locations noted, a great accomplishment. This outstanding achievement in the store could not have been reached without the help and hard work of Liam, Amelia and Kate, they were superb.

We try to to accommodate work experience requests when certain suitable tasks such as this reorganisation arise, my best advice if you are interested in helping us is to keep checking the museums website here.

Liam also found the time to write up his thoughts on his work experience for our blog which he shares with you now:

When looking for work experience I did not go out searching for a job in the Museum of London’s Centre for Human bioarchaeology. My specification was simple; something at least vaguely interesting. I tried various jobs; one of these trains of thought was working in a lab. This is the train that lead me into this job.

I had no real presumptions of what exactly it would be like other than the names of the people I would be working with and that there would be skeletons involved. When I told people what I was doing for work experience they stared blankly back at me bewildered. No one I knew prior to the work experience had any idea exactly what was in store for me. Up until now I haven’t actually explained what the department does. It’s simple; it studies human remains from the London area. These are uncovered from archaeological sites mostly from construction sites. The department is host to over 17,000 individuals more than half from one site; Spitalfields (with roughly 10,500 individuals) and so it is a brilliant resource for budding osteologists.

First impressions were good, it was a friendly environment and I was not set menial tasks which could bore me to death (which I have been told happens with lots of work experience). What it has made apparent to me is one, how tiring work is and two, that it is slightly more relaxed than I had previously expected.

For the largest part of my work experience I have been helping rearrange the boxes in the rotunda to create space and a form of organisation. I have also done some work on the human skeleton so I can (slightly unreliably) name all of the bones in the body (saving individual carpals, tarsals, ribs and some bones in the skull). I can now correctly lay out a skeleton and find its gender. And possibly have a rather shaky guess at the age.

Osteology aside, I have picked up some skills in logistics and some invaluable experience in the workplace.  However saying this it has not made much different to my future aims for work (my life plain is still completely indecisive after university).  

And lastly I want to say thank you to everyone who has helped me or let me help them in my work experience, it was a pleasure.

Here at the Museum of London we love to get inspired by our collections. I hear that very exciting projects are on their way but let me show you what some of us have been working on so far.
We all have a passion for London but for some of the Hosts this enthusiasm becomes a real obsession and so we have been running a different series of workshops for families and children at the museum.

My personal inspiration comes straight from my favourite exhibition in the Museum: the Roman Gallery. With a focus on perhaps one the most famous art activities during Roman times, I decided to work on a mosaic, but a real one, to be made with real stone tesserae and based on authentic Roman design!
The model that I chose for my common project is a twisted rope design technically called Guilloche. I thought it was exceptionally representative of the Roman culture as it was often used in borders to enclose popular patterns and also because we have a wonderful one in our Roman gallery.

What a better example with which to get inspiration from for the kids!
I created the Guilloche freehand but it took me a bit of organisation and time.
I sketched six big circles in an A3 sheet and I drew six smaller circles inside. To make the large circles on the sheets I used a pen held in a loop in a thread and I pinned the string at the centre of the circle to obtain radius of not more than 3cm. At this point I simply drew lines for the rows of the stone tesserae.
Roman craftsmen would opt for different combination of colours according to the uses they were designated for. I wanted to create something that looked quite similar to our Bucklersbury mosaic.

The mosaic I am working on with the kids has six lines and presents an alternation of 3 colours. Normally guilloche frames would have had three lines of tesserae only. These might have been one line of one colour and the remaining two of a different colour but they could also have a combination of three colours for each row.
Here you can see what we have achieved so far…

It is a very time consuming work and your patience will pay dividend.

Our Roman Gallery is planned to be completely refurbished after the 2012 Olympics Games.
I can’t wait to give a tour in the new exhibition and perhaps develop another workshop!

This month’s Continue Creating workshop saw old and new faces alike making 1940s inspired hats. Adult Programmes Manager and freelance milliner, Isabel Benavides showed participants how to take hats bought at charity shops for a couple of pounds and turn them into new creations using ‘make do and mend techniques’. Make do and mend or what has been trendily re-branded as up-cycling, involves taking an old or tired item of clothing, in this instance a hat, and refreshing it into something better. It was popular during rationing when money was tight and often women re-fashioned their husband’s hats, jackets, ties and shirts when they were away fighting for long periods.

 There is some wonderfully kitsch government issued ‘make do and mend’ films from the 1940s on youtube. We watched one that contains the immortal line “You can turn hubby’s hat into a hat for his sweet little wife”. 

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=51689

We also got a sneak peek at some hats from the store. These included the stunning evening pieces below designed by Italian legend Elsa Schiaparelli.

They then received an introduction to how to sculpt felt, create corsages, manipulate hat wire and use Petersham (specialist hat ribbon).  Everyone really got into it and a range of styles started to emerge. From the naval inspired…

 …through the post-modern…

… to the super exotic…

 By the end a great array of male and female hats had been produced and even a child’s head band as a birthday present for one of the participants’ 7 year old niece. 

 It was good to be reminded of ways to upcycle your wardrobe, using methods from another time of great austerity… 

Curator of Social and Working History, Jim Gledhill, discovers a hidden world under Holborn. Listen very carefully, he shall say this only once…

One of my favourite gags in the Indiana Jones franchise is the scene in The Last Crusade when Jones says to the villain clutching a stolen artefact, “This belongs in a museum!” to which the bad guy replies, “So do you!” Sadly the life of a museum curator is not quite as adventurous as that of the fictional archaeologist, but every now and again we do get out and about to visit some unusual places. As a curator responsible for an industrial collection, this usually means visiting various workplaces, current or historic, and usually above ground. Recently I was invited by colleagues at BT Archives to visit a subterranean location which is a bit more off piste.

Approximately one hundred feet (30 metres) below Holborn is one of London’s best kept historical secrets. The Kingsway Exchange, so named for the purposes of misdirection, was originally built as a deep level bomb shelter for up to 8,000 people in 1942, although never actually used as such. Upon completion the tunnels were requisitioned by MI5 and MI6 and other agencies for wartime covert operations. After the war the General Post Office took over the site and extended the complex for use as a trunk telephone exchange (an exchange that connects smaller exchanges) that would be secure in the event of a nuclear war. Dug using shovels in what must have been back-breaking work, the facility was so secret that the soil was spirited out of London for disposal so as not to arouse suspicions. Kingsway continued to be a state secret as important government and defence communications were connected through it. These included the lines to Number 10, the Cabinet Office and the Cold War hotline between the White House and the Kremlin.

The British public only became aware of the complex in the 1960s when it was removed from the secret list. British Pathé made a film in 1968 showing the exchange in operation, but without revealing its location. At its height, the exchange could deal with 6,000 calls simultaneously and handled up to two million calls a week, around 15% of London’s trunk (long distance) telephone traffic. Following the introduction of Subscriber Trunk Dialling from 1959 (where the caller could make a long distance call without the help of an operator) the exchange became less important and was closed in 1980. In the 1980s the government used part of the structure as a back up for its PINDAR nuclear bunker located beneath the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. Since 1990 it has been used for storage only.

I visited Kingsway with staff from BT (the current owners) in order to investigate the exchange which I had recently acquired objects from for the Museum. The BT staff were drawn from different areas of the company’s vast operation (BT still owns the national telecommunications infrastructure). We entered via a non-descript door in a side street off High Holborn. After going down a flight of stairs, the visitor has to pass through a steel blast door – an unsubtle hint that admission is for authorised personnel only! Descending by lift, the visitor emerges in one of two large tunnels that make up the main structure. A series of shafts and interconnecting tunnels link up these enormous reinforced arteries. As you proceed deeper into the complex the sound of Central Line tube trains can be heard rumbling ominously above. I’m struck by what an undiscovered country London really is. There’s a goods lift down there that takes you up to a secret entrance in Chancery Lane tube station. During the Cold War even London Underground was not aware of the existence of this secret door (!).

The clandestine nature of Kingsway means that it is an entirely self-contained complex with an artesian well providing a fresh water supply and huge generators providing power. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis the facility was placed in ‘lock down’ and staff lived in it twenty four hours a day. Equipped with a canteen, bunk beds and even a bar, the complex was designed for its two hundred or so staff to maintain communications in the event of a nuclear strike. Now the disused living quarters have a ghostly feel to them that I’ve often felt visiting abandoned buildings formally so active (no wonder the producers of Dr Who have been making use of Kingsway for filming recently). When examining the rows of empty bunks and the cramped living conditions that accompanied them, one concludes that surviving a nuclear war would have been cold comfort.

I recently collected a Cheetah teleprinter which was used by BT internal security staff at Kingsway in the 1980s. I visited their former office, now empty and derelict. When collecting at former industrial sites I am often left wondering what became of the people who worked there. In the depths of Kingsway, beneath the working day world of pedestrians, cyclists and taxis, I get an even stronger sense of this. It’s difficult for historians to study the secret world – its inhabitants are usually very careful not to leave behind much evidence. Often they do not want to be found. I do know however, that someone typed away on the Cheetah’s keyboard day in day out in the depths of Kingsway and it was their job to make sure that this vast complex remained secure. It’s odd to think what a big deal that was back then when Soviet nuclear missiles were pointing at London and Ronald Reagan was in the White House.

Now even Cold War bunkers have become real estate: BT has put Kingsway up for sale on the open market. The Metropolitan Police have expressed an interest in using the huge fortified tunnels as a rifle range. Whatever becomes of the old exchange, the secret is now well and truly out.

Yesterday, a group of Londoners roamed around the Museum creating photographs using shoe boxes as cameras. Inspired by images in the Street Photography exhibition, they used the pin-hole technique, pioneered in the 1830s. When working in pin-hole, anything can be your camera. You simply make a hole in a box to let a very small amount of light onto photographic paper. The photographers of the images above and below used shoe boxes.

The shoe boxes were painted black inside, with a sheet of photographic paper on the bottom. The photographers set them up at different points around the site and allowed light through in for about 2 minutes. The images were then developed in the museum dark room with the help of facilitator Kathryn Faulkner and the museum photographic team. The end product is an intriguing negative image, but a few clicks on Photoshop or the right type of phone, reveal the positive version.

This workshop was part of the Inclusion ‘Continue Creating’ programme.

Iron Mongers Hall - Original Negative

Iron Mongers Hall - Positive inversion

Jug and glasses - Original negative

Jug and glasses - Inverted positive

High walk - Original Negative

High walk - Positive inversion

Garden - Negative original

Garden - Positive inversion

The Museum of London Learning Department has teamed up with the Institute of Physics (external link) to take you on a tour of some of London’s famous and lesser known places of scientific discovery. A brand new smartphone game will guide you around the city, giving you activities and photo opportunities along the way.

Take a new view of the city and uncover the fascinating stories behind the places you wander past each day. The trail will take you around central London and will be a great way to fill a lunchtime or a summer’s day.

To enjoy the tour, you will need a smartphone, either an iPhone or Android phone with an internet connection, and the free SCVNGR (external link) app available from iTunes (external link) and the Google App Store (external link). Simply login to the app, choose treks and then search for “London Science Uncovered”.

Once you’ve completed the trail, answered the questions and snapped your photos, come along to the Museum of London. Show your phone and congratulations message to the Museum’s hosts at the entrance desk to claim your goodie bag of prizes!

We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions too, so send us a message:

aflowers@museumoflondon.org.uk

Blog author: Alex Flowers, Project Coordinator (Digital Learning)

Here, Jelena explains more:

“My paper presentation was based around the analysis of the 227 individuals retained in the crypt of St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, London.

They are a particularly interesting and unique group of individuals as they have a substantial amount of biographical information associated with them provided by coffin plates and detailed parish records.

This provides a mine of information to assist with further research on the individuals allowing access to numerous documentary data such as birth and marriage certificates, all of which aids greatly in building up a more complete picture of individual lives and the times in which they lived.

I mentioned in my paper that during the analysis of the individuals many disease processes and trauma were discovered, further research of which, would be enhanced with radiographic investigation.

The nature and logistics of the skeletal material and the crypt itself did not make taking the elements off site to be x-rayed a feasible proposition and so the only real option available would be for a portable x-ray machine to be brought into the crypt.

Luckily, one of the people listening to my presentation was Jerry Conlogue from Quinnipiac University, USA, who has had many years experience with radiography and archaeological material, particularly mummified remains.

Jerry was fascinated by the crypt individuals and saw the opportunity for a challenge to be overcome in being able to implement an x-ray project at St Bride’s and he secured funding from the School of Health Sciences at his university to be able to come to London and establish a project with us.

The premise of the project was to ultimately create a digital x-ray archive of the individuals which would be available online from our Centre for Human Bioarchaeology website for research purposes.

So in the summer of 2010, Jerry was able to come to St Bride’s and with the assistance of Dr Mark Viner at Cranfield University and Xograph, hired a portable digital x-ray machine.

The Xograph x-ray system was set up in the crypt and Jerry, with the assistance of student Kelly Eggleton, was able to x-ray all the sub adults (those individuals less than 18 years old) and 70 of the skulls and mandibles. 

We quickly established the speed and efficency of having a digital x-ray machine available providing images of excellent clarity.

The following images are from x-rays taken of a young girl who died aged three years, seven months and nine days in 1840.

Due to the success of the first phase of this project, further funding has been secured from the School of Health Sciences to complete, this year, the x-raying of the remaining  skulls and mandibles.

It is hoped that there will be a continuation of the x-ray project and that the next phase will concentrate on the diseases and trauma identified in the bones.

This will then provide a unique x-ray archive and an invaluable resource for research that will hopefully be readily accessible to researchers via our website.

An added bonus to the nature of this project is that it is non destructive and acts in tandem with the skeletal database as a means of conserving the remains without continual handling of them.”

I blogged in August (can’t believe it was that long ago!) about the consultation that we did at the beginning of this project and a little bit about what we have planned, but now I’m back to tell you a bit more about how the project has taken shape.

I’m really proud of this project because it’s the biggest one that I’ve managed, and it’s involved a lot of people, a lot of hard work and a lot of planning and I’m really excited about launching the resources next month because, who cares about modesty, I think they’re great!!

A little bit about the pocket histories and picturebank

Our official description says this:

‘The pocket histories explore London’s history through objects from the Museum of London’s collections. Picturebank supports the pocket histories with images for educational use.’

Essentially, each pocket history topic takes 5 images (almost all of objects in the Museum’s collection) and uses them to tell the stories of London’s past.

In the Picturebank, users can search or browse by period or topic

These images (or most of them anyway) are then used in the picturebank where users (probably mainly in schools) can browse them by topic or by period, or just do a keyword search.  Once users have found an image, they can enlarge it, read a simple caption about it, use some prompt questions to start a discussion about it and find out whether or not it’s on display at the Museum.

The pocket histories cover loads of fascinating topics like

• What was life like in Tudor London?
• Why were London’s docks built?
• London Plagues 1348-1665
• What was life like for children in Victorian London?
• The ‘London Look’: London fashion trends 1950–2002
• Political Protest in London, 1750–1900

And we hope to add more in the coming years.

You’ll be able to read the pocket histories online, or download and print a PDF that’s all nice and designed and pretty if you’d prefer.

This is a sneak preview of what one of the nice, designed PDF versions look like

So who are they for?

The pocket histories are ideal for anyone who’s interested in London’s history and we’re hoping that they’ll gradually work become pages that people stumble on on Google even if they don’t necessarily know about the Museum of London.

As well as this general audience, we think they’ll be particularly useful for secondary school students doing research, primary school teachers preparing lessons or a visit to the Museum, or parents helping their children with homework or just helping them learn more about London’s history.

We designed the picturebank for a more specific schools and colleges audience because we think that it’ll work best on an interactive whiteboard or in an ICT suite.  The captions were written with children in mind and we’ve chosen the images that we’ve included very carefully to make sure that we can give teachers free rein to view, copy and print the images for use in their classroom or for private research (any other use, including sharing the resources would need to be negotiated with the Museum first).

About the project

One of the reasons I’ve most enjoyed this project is because I’ve worked with some really great people on it and I think this has been absolutely integral to why I’m so proud of the resources.  We have a core project team of two curators (Meriel Jeater and Beverley Cook), 4 audience-y type people (representing the schools team – Kirsty Sullivan, the inclusion team – Kirsty Marsh, the families team – Sandra Hedblad, and the adults team – Julie Carr), and a representative of the Information Resources Section (IRS) – Matthew Rose.  Having curators on board since the beginning of the project has really ensured that the topics we cover are grounded in our collection, our expertise, and the themes in our galleries.  Having representatives of all our target audiences on the team has been completely invalauble from the point of view of making sure that we create resources that are suitable for and interesting to all audiences.  And having the IRS perspective from Matthew who knows our collections management database inside out has been essential, particularly for the picturebank. We’ve also had a team of curators and writers outside the project team who we couldn’t have done without, and a host of other people across the museum who’ve been so helpful and so supportive.

We’ve had some brilliant discussions in our monthly project meetings where we took the time at the start to really think about why and how we would create the resources, and what we were trying to achieve. It’s meant that we thought  carefully about each one and it’s made them, I think, really strong, grounded, accessible and interesting resources (but that’s just me, you’ll have to let me know what you think when they go live!)

Nerdy goodness…

I alluded just now to our collections management database, and this leads me on to another really exciting (if maybe a little nerdy) part of the project.  I won’t go into the technical ins and outs, but a big advantage of our new picturebank is that it links to our collections management database. This means that if a curator takes an object off display, or maybe adds a bit more information to a record, or takes a photo of another aspect of it, once they update our collections management database, that information will be passed through to the picturebank – cool huh?

So I promise to try and blog again when the resources are up.  There’s no point me putting the links here yet because they’re not up yet, but I hope this gives you a bit of a sneak preview of what to expect, and hope you’ll be of the same opinion as me about them – I think they’re great!

On Saturday I spoke at an Untold London workshop held at the Museum of London, on the subject of LGBT history and blogging. This was coupled with a tour of the ‘gay’ artifacts in the Museum and a writing session.

LGBT history is full of great stories and many brave individuals right through history who were ready to defy the convention, and often the laws of the day to lead their life. Its interpretation is fraught with difficulty, often due to twentieth century abstract perceptions of what it means to be ‘queer’. What was it like to be of alternative sexuality two hundred or three hundred years ago? Despite my grasp of the stories and facts I don’t know, do I? I don’t know what it’s like now (I managed to announce, to much hilarity, that ‘I am not a gay man’). I have never felt alone or rejected because of my sexuality, and have certainly never been persecuted for it.

So when I was preparing for the workshop, I had no idea what to expect – and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. What a crowd! For a start, our venue in the Clore centre was packed, almost double the attendance expected. Interests ranged from high fashion in court circles to trades unions to concepts of what it means to be trans-gender, genealogy and education.

The lovely Babs gave an introduction, I blathered for a bit about being alternative in Georgian London and then Kate took us on a tour of the gay artifacts of the Museum. What is a gay artifact? Well might you ask. After all, gay people own clocks, shoes and read books just like everyone else. A ‘Pride’ badge is not enough to show the input of gay people into the history of London. So we looked at objects such as the head of Hadrian found near London Bridge. Hadrian was devoted to his lover Antinous, whose death almost broke the emperor. Did you know Antinous’s ‘head’ was the only non-imperial one ever to appear on Roman coinage? As our large group wended its way through a busy Saturday afternoon Museum of London, the sense of fun and enjoyment was clear. I learned things I didn’t know, and not just from Kate – my knowledge of Marie Antoinette’s fashion dictatorship is now considerably increased. As we walked we discussed the difference between the performance of alternative sexuality (Alexander McQueen came up here) and the reality of living an alternative life. Which is which and which deserves to be remembered?

We returned to the Clore for questions, discussion and writing. The challenge was to put something down about the experiences of the day, and the results were quite simply, brilliant. Varied, eloquent and often very funny, they highlighted what had been learned and often passed sharp comment on modern gay life. I would like to thank everyone who came (and Babs and Kate for a splendid day), and to extend an invitation to celebrate LGBT history month in February: email me a blog post please (lucy@georgianlondon.com), up to 500 words on your favourite pre-1950 LGBT Londoner, to be featured on the Georgian London blog. Tell me how you found them and why you admire them. It can be integrity, heroism, social daring or killer style. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

So on these pages, we’ve told you about the site we’ve all been working on: GPO75, the general post office site on Newgate Street. We’ve told you a little about the pottery we’ve been seeing when working through these boxes: Pottery from GPO75. We’ve let you find out a bit more about the volunteers on the project: Volunteer Profiles. There’s been a bit about what we do on our days away from the museum: Wednesday & Thursday. We’ve even had a guest blog, written by the table we’ve been sitting at: The Table’s viewpoint. And of course there’s been the weekly updates.

Today’s blog returns to our Wednesday group as they too join us at the Museum of London for the final part of their project.

Our Wednesday team consist of 13 volunteers - ten members of the University of the 3rd Age – a group of mainly retired people who continue to learn through Shared Learning Projects – and three 6th Formers from Mossbourne Academy, Hackney. Over the past 8 weeks they’ve been working on different material in the archive, recording their progress with cameras each week. This week and next, they are creating films based on aspects of the previous eight weeks, in our E-Learning Studio under the guidance of Alex Flowers, the Digital Learning Project Co-Ordinator.

So far they’ve been based at LAARC and each week have been focusing their attention on a different material; the first three weeks concerned registered finds (objects with an individual value) starting with non-metals, then metals and finally leather objects. The second three weeks concerned General Finds (objects looked at as an assemblage) and started with pottery, followed by animal bone and then, last week, building material.

During each session there’s been an interactive workshop, where a curator shows and explains some of the best objects that fall under that week’s theme. We’ve had talks from Curator of Prehistory, Jon Cotton about flint. Finds Liason Officer, Kate Sumnall talked about metallic objects. Curator and Leather expert, Jackie Keily showed us brilliant examples of leather. Museum of London Archaeology’s Zoologist, Alan Pipe talked about how he approaches bone assemblages. And the VIP project managers (Me & Glynn!) gave a couple of talks in our Ceramic & Glass store about pottery & building material.

Today, it was over the the E-Learning Studio to put all the photos they’ve been taking into software such as Windows Movie Maker, Photostory and Animoto.com to produce films documenting their experience.

This has certainly been a most enjoyable part of VIP7 and it’s been great to see the project’s participants engage with both digital technology and archaeology.

We wanted to keep a slight air of mystery around the project whilst we were still consulting audiences because we wanted the people who we were consulting not to have any preconceived ideas. Now that the consultation’s finished I can now tell you a bit more about the project that this was leading to.

Martin, ‘the man on the mezzanine’, was carrying out some audience consultation with us as part of a project we’re working on to redevelop two important aspects of our website – our factpacks and our picturebank for schools.

About factpacks and picturebank

There are various ways to find our existing factpacks, but one way is to go to : the factpacks page within the Kids section. Our factpacks are basically short introductions to an area of London’s history.  You can use them to find out, for example, about:

• Children in Victorian London
• What life was like in Medieval London
• Suffragettes

And lots of other topics too. We think our factpacks are really interesting, but some of them are quite old now, and some of them are buried quite deep within our site. We’re taking this opportunity to refresh them and to add new ones as well.

The picturebank is a resource that’s mainly for schools and you can find it at: www.museumoflondon.org.uk/picturebank. It’s a collection of images divided up by topic that we think school teachers and pupils might find interesting.  Again, it’s got some great material in it, but we think it needs a bit of a new look so we’re refreshing it.

About the audience consultation

On top of the consultation with families, Martin also conducted a focus group with teachers and we’re delighted that over 200 people completed our online survey recently about how they use online resources!  If you were one of these people, thank you very much – your information has been very useful.

I wanted to make sure as much as possible that people answered the questionnaire and attended the focus groups with an open mind, without knowing what we were working towards.  As such, this consultation was quite general, and was about finding out how you use the web, what kinds of material you look for, where you look for it, what you like/dislike about it, how you look at it (online/printed off etc).

What we found out

Rather pleasingly we didn’t really discover much we hadn’t anticipated! Even so it was very useful for us to talk to different audiences and get a real picture of how they behaved online, and then get a judgement on what they thought of our existing resources.

Here’s a quick summary of our findings:

• People mostly use Google as a starting point to find images or information about a historical period (no great surprises there)
• People like to be able to click around and explore a topic and choose their own path through it
• Some people like to print things off, in which case they like it to look nice (i.e. not just a printout of a webpage that doesn’t print very well) when they print it
• Text needs to broken up into sections and broken up with images
• Teachers particularly would ideally like to be able to edit any resources that we provide to make them relevant and suitable for their particular students. This means if they’re downloading documents, they want Word format rather than PDFs
• Teachers will generally make their own resources out of what we provide so we should provide easy-to-find images and information that they can cut and paste
• The BBC History website and BBC Bitesize are particularly popular places to look for historical information, particularly for children
• There are a few websites that come up time and time again as good sources of material for schools – particularly Woodlands Junior school
• Quite a few people hadn’t considered that a Museum website might have information about historical events or historical images
• The families we spoke to didn’t tend to think of using a museum website to prepare for a visit other than to look at opening times, how to get here etc
• The most common place to look at these resources seems to be on a home computer

So the next task is to write all of this up in detail and work out how we’re going to proceed.  We’ve got some pretty good ideas of what we’ll do.  It’s likely that we’ll rename the factpacks ‘Pocket Histories’. What do you think of the name? We’ve decided what topics we’d like to do first and we’re starting to get things moving.

What can you do to help?

• Keep an eye out in the first few months of 2011 for these new resources
• Let us know what you think of them in another online questionnaire at the end of the project
• Let us know what website you like to use to find historical information or historical images
• Leave a comment below if you’d be interested in taking part in any future website consultations like the one I’ve outlined above
• Let us know what aspects of London’s history you’d be interested in finding out more about
• Remember – Museum websites are a treasure trove of information – not just information about opening times. Next time you visit us, take a look around our website first to find out a bit more about what you can see.

“Trench 2 has been cleared to a fairly level surface making it easier to identify the different areas of soil and debris. Following on from a talk on planning, we divided the trench into sections and split into groups to have a stab at plotting by grid these different areas.

In Trench 1 we have had a first taste of using a mattock, or pick axe, to break up large lumps of debris (mainly bricks)…

…We found several metal curves which we guessed could have been drawer handles and parts of a chimney pot.

Also today, Roy Stephenson, Head of the Department of Archaeological Collections and Archive at the Museum of London, came to speak to us about pottery and ways of dating finds.

He was able to identify, from our finds, pottery from Roman and Tudor times and Midlands Purpleware, Tudor Greenware and a small piece of black basalt ware made by Wedgewood.

This is a five day course for adults to learn the basics techniques of field archaeology in an urban environment.

We are continuing on the site following on from our community excavation work with schools and other groups.

Two of our new recruits, Becky and Katie,  took time out from excavating to share their initial thoughts and discoveries:

” Today is our first ever day as trainee archaeologists. About 14 of us are here from different backgrounds – old and young, supple and not so supple!  we are excavating footprints of Victorian terraced houses, many of which were bombed irreparably during the war and subsequently flattened and cleared before becoming a park.

First off we learnt trowelling to clear debris in order to reveal soil/brick features, discovering small finds as we go.

It is thrilling  to identify an intricate design on a piece of pottery, tile or clay pipe, but less attractive items must also be collected such as random metal pieces and glass.

There is an enormous variety of material…

…brick, plaster from architectural features, coal, slate, flint (all discarded unless unusual) and then clay pipes, pottery , glass etc…oh, and losts of dust!

Will be learning this afternoon how to record the finds on context sheets and seeing what everyone elsehas found and what we can learn.”

In preparation for the first of our school groups arriving on-site Monday (spaces are still available to attend the week-long adult training digs  in July – see our website for details)  Tom, one of our senior archeologists, spent a morning on-site clearing away the top soil back to the “demolition layer” a few inches below the grass turf.

We have been surprised by the amount of brickwork found so near to the surface as this demolition waste is normally moved off-site or more often it is piled together and covered in turf – which could explain that little hill you have in the garden of you flat or house…

One of our key jobs in advance of Monday is to record what is  currently visible on-site which will help our archaeologists plan dig locations for our first visitors Monday.

The results of our upcoming work on-site and the thoughts of those involved will be the subject of updates here on our blog and on our twitter pages.

Kate and Jackie ,who are coordinating the dig, were recently welcomed by the owners of one of the remaining Victorian houses in the terrace which used to stretch to include the site we are now investigating to have a look around allowing them to gain an insight into the scale and design of the homes that used to be on the site of our dig. They were both keen to explore the basement but unfortunately this had been renovated by the local council in the 1980s making the work that will be supported over the forthcoming weeks that more important…

Gold finger!

Last week saw the second Continue Creating workshop for 2010. This is part of the Inclusion Programme and past participants of all projects are invited back to a workshop every month. It’s social, fun and a way of maintaining a relationship between the Museum and our friends. May’s workshop saw us making C19th style Jumpin’ Jack puppets. Sadly, I can’t seem to upload all the images so here are two of the stars. As you can see, they have a contemporary twist!

Hand made envelope

Mail art is art that uses the postal system as a medium. Mail artists typically exchange ephemera in the form of illustrated letters, rubberstamped, decorated or illustrated envelopes, artist trading cards, postcards, artistamps, faux postage, mail-interviews, friendship books, decos, and three-dimensional objects. As an art form, it has been used for comic and satirical affect and for commercial advertising to the promotion of social causes such as fair trade, and the abolition of slavery.

Mail art envelope

Mail art became very popular in the C19th, particularly in the USA. Examples exist of pictorial propaganda envelopes with patriotic motifs produced by both sides during the American Civil War. It then saw a re-surgence in popularity in  the 1950s and an international network of artists exchanging a myriad of objects developed and thrived right up to the digital revolution of the 1990s.  In the second decade of the third millennium artists are starting to look to it again as a genre, in reaction against the explosion of electronic mail exchange.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, last week, artist Emily Candela led a workshop on this as part of the Museum’s Inclusion programme and it produced some really lovely work (as you can see). Everyone who heard about this fairly unknown trend got very interested in and inspired by it. In the workshop, we all created envelopes from tracing paper, with hidden treasures inside: bits of old postcards, beads, ribbons, poems. And the reaction of the addressees to receiving them has been fantastic. So we wanted to pass the idea on. Much more exciting to receive than an email on your computer or a bill through your letterbox.

At work in Elephant and Castle

As a newbie to the museum, I thought I’d say hello by introducing the project I’m currently working on, People and Change. The project, which was devised by Lucie Fitton, is working with predominantly adult asylum seekers to produce art work that will be displayed in the London, Sugar and Slavery gallery. The gallery has multiple themes and the one we’re exploring with this group is Change. Rosemarie Marke, an acclaimed painter and ex-aslyum seeker who was born in Sierra Leone, is leading the group. We’re working in two centres in Peckham with lots of different individuals. Each is producing a drawing or painting of what change means to them. Some have chosen to draw things associated with home (house, landscape, objects) or parts of London life that are totally new to them – e.g. football stadiums, London buses, British festivals. The more talented and regularly attending members, however, have branched out and are now producing more abstract work. We are encouraging them all to write something about the picture in their mother tongue, and this will be displayed with the piece on the wall with an English translation.

Simply being at the centre, reveals how rewarding and challenging this project is for both the Museum and the participants. Prior to this project, I had never been inside a support centre for asylum seekers and I have learnt a lot. Both centres are community halls that open one afternoon a week to offer a range of services – a hot meal between 1 and 2pm, medical consultation with a nurse, a crèche and nanny, advice on housing, employment and benefits, English lessons and arts and craft activities. There are usually at least 40 people there and in broad terms, half are young mothers with children under 5 and half are men between the ages of 25 and 40. Although we don’t talk about this, we know from the support workers that many are separated from their family, often recovering from trauma and in constant uncertainty over their future. For some people, even getting to the centre is quite a triumph. Either psychologically, or logistically, it can be very difficult. One of our regular attendees lives in Edmonton but goes to the centre every day.

We never know who is going to sit down when we set up our materials on the tables after lunch, but there are a few faces who have attended nearly all of the sessions. We meet quite a few people only once but even in one afternoon an individual can produce a very interesting piece of work. We don’t ask participants their story, unless they bring the subject up themselves, but sometimes people will tell us something about home. Often though, talk focuses around colour and technique and sharing artistic tips. One person had never seen a paintbrush before and until he was corrected by Rosemarie, was painting using the non-bristle end.

Home in Eritrea and Home in London

The point of the project, from the museum’s point of view is to give these individuals a voice in the gallery. From their point of view, we hope, it is to be able to express something and to share a calm experience for a few hours a week. There is not too much talking, which makes the session quite relaxing and takes the pressure off the participants to speak English all the time. We hope that the prospect of displaying their work at a high profile gallery is fun and confidence giving and we very much hope that the artists can be at the unveiling. There are a lot of factors, however, that guaranteeing this could be very difficult.

We are working in Peckham until the end of March and hope that the work should be up by autumn. When it does go on display, look out for work by the following characters – Gloria, Dawit, Mal, Bernard, Maria and Dani.

Go to the Museum of London Learning section

Go to the Museum of London Docklands Learning section

This is the end of quite a big work project for me and I’m quite pleased with the results.

There are three big reasons why the new sections are a good thing:

1. They tidy up the way that we present a large amount of information about our learning programmes online
2. They give a nice, easy, attractive and clear way for children to find a selection of our fun online games (see kids section)
3. You can now find out information through either of the two websites (Museum of London and Museum of London Docklands)

A substantial number of the resources that were previously available are still available on the sites. Let us know in the comments below if you can’t find anything and we’ll try and direct you.

There are also some new resources. Here are 6 cool new things featured in the new learning sections:

1. We took this opportunity to make some new interactive whiteboard presentations and quizzes available for KS2 Tudors, KS2 Anglo-Saxons, KS2 Romans, KS3 Romans and KS3 Medieval.  See the resources section for more information.
2. Each of our schools sessions now have their own webpage which will eventually link to the relevant teachers pack (some are already up, others are coming soon).  See the Museum of London ‘what’s on -schools’ section and the Museum of London Docklands ‘what’s on – schools’ section for more information.
3. Each of our adult courses now has their own page as well.  See the ‘adult courses’ section
4. We have a regularly updated ‘session availability‘ pages for Museum of London and Museum of London Docklands so you can check before calling the box office which dates are still available for the school session you’d like
5. There’ll be information to help you with your risk assessments going up very soon
6. It should be much easier to join our Teachers Network and stay informed!

Please look at the new sites and let me know what you think, especially if you regularly used the old site.  I hope you find the new sites useful and easy to use!