Monday, March 31, 2008

Getting Up To Date

Phew! We've just got back from the museum where we have been working today. We're actually earlier than expected as we worked hard and got the jobs done quicker than expected. So I thought I'd just explain about some of the volunteer stuff I'm doing.

The museum was my first volunteering job. To start off with, John and I were identifying, cataloging and storing the stuffed birds. We finished that in 2006 and started on the egg collection. The eggs have been stored rather badly since the 1950s when, I think, they were moved rather rapidly from their old resting place in the Shrewsbury Library. Many rolled about in their cases because they weren't properly packed, and others were sqashed when the lids of boxes that were too small were pushed down on them, so there are a lot of broken eggs to deal with. In addition many of them are very dirty so we are slowly and gently cleaning them with cotton and water. You have to be very careful because most of them are very old and fragile.


The pictures show what the eggs looked like when we first started on them. That job is still continuing, but today we were back with the birds. Most of them have been stored in capboards in the ceramics gallery of the museum, but that room is about to be used for another purpose, so all the birds had to be moved. We managed to get it all done by squeezing some temporary storage space out of the dusty old attic and by packing the birds more efficiently in the trays they're stored in.

The Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery is currently housed in a Tudor building called Rowley's House. Click on the link for pictures and lots of information about the museum. This is a lovely old house, partly done in huge black timbers and white plaster and partly done in brick. But it's totally unsuitable as a modern museum. You can see light through the cracks in the walls and the floor boards, the rain comes in at times, there is no handicapped access to the upper floors and there are inadequate toilet facilities for a public building. There's not a lot that can be done to improve things as it is a listed building and hence, protected from change by law.

Fortunately, we'll be moving in a few years into the Old Music Hall, when the entertainment functions of that building are moved into the new Entertainment Venue in Frankwell on the other side of the River Severn. Before we can move in, however, the Old Music Hall site must be redeveloped. The building is actually built around a medieval stucture called Vaughn's Mansion and that has to be exposed, examined and prepared for public view. There's a great deal of exitement about this building as it is very old and they could find all sorts of interesting stuff as the layers of newer building are peeled off from its fabric. Next week they are taking paintings off the walls. These are huge and it's going to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to get them down, take them out of their frames, cover them with tissue and roll them up for storage. They are so big they can't be stored in their frames. Once the building has been renovated they will be re-stretched, the conservators will remove the tissue and then do any necessary conservation work on them before they are re-framed and hung back up!

In the new "Old Music Hall" building we will have a good, new purpose built museum space adjacent to Vaughn's Mansion and will share that space with the cafe and the Visitor Information Centre (VIC) which are there now. In the meantime, the VIC is moving in with us in Rowley's house along with several people who are working on the redevelopment project. To make room for all these people, the ceramics gallery is being turned into offices and that's why we had to move the birds out today.


Enough about that ... let's move on to the SOS (Shropshire Ornithological Society). I quickly became the tea-lady for the Church Stretton branch of this organization because the old tea-lady became ill. This is not an onerous task. We have 5 indoor meetings a year and I put on tea, coffee and biscuits for the members to consume when they arrive.


John, however, has become very involved in the breeding and over-wintering bird survey programs of the SOS. These are run in conjunction with the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) and he has become a district co-ordinator for a part of Shropshire. He has also volunteered to map the results for the upcoming Atlas. At present, his work involves finding volunteers to do the various surveys in his area, helping them when they have questions or problems, collecting and entering data on the web. Later, as the data come in he will be doing more and more of the mapping and analysis.
It's dinner time .... I'll have to do another post later about the rest of my volunteer activities!