The working life of Museum of London

Each week during the Volunteer Inclusion Project based in Archaeology in Action, you can meet members of our brilliant volunteer team as they work through pottery collections. You can also find out more about them here, on the volunteer profile pages. Today’s volunteer is Ben.

1. When did you join the volunteer programme and why?

VIP5 which started in February 2010. I was looking for work experience in the museum/archive/heritage sector, working with collections.

2. What was your most memorable day whilst volunteering?

I would say it was more about memorable moments – discovering odd or intriguing fragments whilst packaging finds, and learning about their origins.

3. What was your favourite object you discovered whilst volunteering?

One of the first – a Highgate ware Roman pot.

4. What’s your favourite part of the museum?

A bit of everything really.

5. Upper galleries or lower galleries?

The new Lower Galleries are great, but the Upper Galleries hold a certain affection for me and I remember being awed at an early age by the model display of the Great Fire of London. In fact visiting the MoL in the early 80’s is one my earliest and formative memories of London and probably explains why I’m volunteering here now.

6. Favourite year in London’s history?

1926, when Hitchcock made The Lodger (A Story of the London Fog) at Gainsborough Studios (which coincidentally was situated just over the road from the LAARC on the Regent’s Canal near Islington). A great gothic and expressionistic portrait of London, with the infamous London Fog playing an important role.

7. Favourite Londoner?

John Dee, the Elizabethan Magus – mathematician, astronomer, and sometime alchemist & magician

8. Mortimer Wheeler or Indiana Jones?

Wheeler on TV.

9. If you could dig anywhere in the world, where would you excavate?

Shoreditch, London

10. What’s next for you after this project?

More volunteering. Hopefully a paid job in a museum or archive if I’m lucky.