Time is a valuable commodity and our volunteers willingly donate a few hours to enable us to bring to you the displays and exhibitions you have enjoyed over the years and will continue to enjoy for years to come.
At Central Museum we have had many dedicated volunteers working with us over the years and Hugh Conroy is one of them. A retired police officer, Hugh has been volunteering for the past thirteen years and originally came to help out due to his interest in clocks.
He comes in once a
week and has worked on many of the museum’s time-pieces. One of his regular
duties is to keep the clock in our Victorian room setting ticking away or to
“wind the old girl up” as he likes to say!For several years he has, under the guidance of Claire Reed, museums conservator, been involved in several projects. These have included the conservation of a long case clock, a nineteenth century chair and several metal-based artefacts including two nineteenth century microscopes which are currently on display in our Victorian Room setting.
Look out for more evidence of Hugh’s work when you next visit, he cleaned and polished several of our beautiful EKCO radios that form part of our new displays and with a collection that numbers over two hundred pieces, we may require his services for a while longer!
The museum
service holds a wonderful collection of costume and accessories and we are
fortunate to have a dedicated group of volunteers who come in once a month
to the Beecroft Art Gallery where the collection is housed, to assist us
with their care and preservation.Working with historic costume requires skill and a delicate touch, which our ladies certainly have as they are all members of the South East Essex branch of the Embroiderer’s Guild. When a piece of costume is donated to the museum it goes through meticulous processes not only to preserve the piece, but to also preserve the details of its history.
Each individual item is given a unique number (an accession number) which we can then use to reference all the information we have about it. The number is written onto a cotton tape “label”, which our volunteers then carefully hand stitch into the garment.
Each
item is also checked for any repairs that may need to be carried out, for
example if a button or piece of lace decoration is hanging off, these are
painstakingly stitched back into position, using the original stitch holes
where possible. The group have also prepared numerous padded hangers and costume and accessory covers for us over the years and this type of work is equally important as it means we can store the items safely and preserve them for future generations.
Look out for our regular programme of costume exhibitions at the Beecroft Art Gallery as the majority of our pieces, have, at some stage been worked on by our volunteers and many could not have been shown without their help.
Currently we have a full roster of volunteers, but if space becomes available for newcomers to the team we will let everyone know here - watch this space!