The working life of Museum of London

Hi there, my name is Henry and I volunteer at LAARC. The archive team invited me to help them two years ago and I’ve been here ever since, usually helping for an hour or so a week. However, over the past two weeks, I’ve been helping Adam and Glynn each day.

Most people know that the LAARC has 10km of shelving and over 100,000 boxes, however, not everyone realises that the archive also has over 10,000 breezeblocks that make up its walls. Unfortunately these breezeblocks emit much dust into the air, which over the years has settled on the numerous archival containers.  My role is to remove the dust that has been sitting around on shelves and boxes for several years.

I start at 10am with my brush nozzle head on and suck up the dust from the tops of the shelves. Goodness! What a load of dust! It usually takes about 2 hours to thoroughly get through a length of racking, after which I switch to using my long flat vacuum head (with brush!) and sweep and suck the floor simultaneously. Who says men can’t multi task!

At the end of the day it’s my turn for a little dust down, when one of the team wipes me with a cloth. They then put me back in my cozy little box.

Before I was volunteering I used to think my life sucked, but being here makes me very happy and I like to think I am an essential part of the archive volunteer team –  it’s nice to know I play my part in the upkeep of London’s excellent archaeological store.