Murmurings in Millbrook

I was planning to do a 'packing by numbers' post today to share some of the frankly astonishing figures that have come out of our big collections packing project. I decided this could wait for the time being, though, as I was really taken by a little set of images I came across while doing some research into the origins of the museum - so here's the story behind them.

Back in April 1919, Percy George 'Piggie' Langdon, a teacher at Bedford Modern School and curator of the school museum, got together a group of boys who were interested in archaeology to investigate a mystery surrounding the churchyard in Millbrook, Bedfordshire.

According to local rumour over the previous 60 or 70 years, two effigies had been removed from an altar tomb in the chancel "because strange sounds proceeded from them". It was said that the effigies had been taken to the rectory cellar before being buried in the churchyard - where presumably the strange noises stopped!


St Michael and All Angels Church in Millbrook, Bedfordshire,
photographed in the early years of the 20th century



Undeterred by the ghostly stories, Langdon got permission to excavate in the south-east corner of the churchyard. After three days digging, during which, if the photographs are anything to go by, the poor boys had to remain in their school uniforms, portions of the smashed tomb were discovered along with the broken remains of the effigies.



The boys digging - uniform must be worn at all times!



Proudly showing off their discovery to the local press -
'Piggie' Langdon is on the right-hand side



The effigies, which commemorated William and Mary Huett (the latter of whom died in June 1602), were re-set into the chancel of the church.

The success of the excavation attracted local and national press and helped to make a name for what became the Bedford Modern School Archaeological Society. The Society went on to help Langdon reorganise the school museum displays, ridding it of much "junk" along the way, including "moulting birds and a moth-eaten stuffed lion".

It's nice to think that, all these years later, the museum is still helping to get children involved in archaeology. In a couple of weeks time, at The Making of Bedford event in Bedford's Priory Country Park, children from Saturday Archaeology Workshops (SAW), which is run by the museum and Albion Archaeology, will be displaying the results of some on-site test pit excavations.


Tom

Object of the Week: David Bomberg 'Across the Valley, Ronda'

One of my absolute favourite works in the Cecil Higgins collection is David Bomberg’s charcoal study 'Across the Valley, Ronda'. It’s a large, expressive drawing that is miles away from the style that Bomberg is better known for – the geometric, cubistic works such as the ones exhibited at the 'Vorticist' exhibition of 1915 (around which Tate Britain’s current The Vorticists exhibition centres). His painting The Mud Bath, 1914, was one of the defining pictures in the pre and early war years when the young avant garde of the London art scene looked to the Parisian cubists and the Italian Futurists and in July 1914 Bomberg staged a one-man show at the Chenil Gallery, Chelsea, London, with a militant foreword in which he championed Pure Form.

DAVID BOMBERG (1890-1957)

Across the Valley, Ronda,1954. Charcoal on paper, 46.6 ´ 61.9 cm. Accession No.: P.560

Bomberg's experiences during the First World War as a private in the Royal Engineers and Kings Royal Rifle Corps contributed to a shift away from the agressive modernism of his early work and a move to more representational paintings of landscapes and portraits. With this he struggled to regain the acclaim that he had recieved for his work before the war and entered a period as an outsider to the art world, unable to sell or exhibit with the galleries that had previously been supportive. He took a post with the Zionist Organisation to travel to Palestine to paint the city of Jerusalem, creating a series of works between 1924-27 that were by far the most literal and topographical of his career. This project also ended the increasing literalisation in Bomberg's work and, with a period in Spain painting the landscapes of Toledo and Ronda, he rediscovered his sense of form - this time with a more searching, painterly approach where, through repeated re-working, the forms of the subject would emerge.

This sense of form developed into a philosophy of art, summed up in his phrase "the spirit in the mass". Bomberg wrote: ‘Drawing flows from beginning to end with one sustained impulse…The approach is through feeling and touch and less by sight…Drawing…reveals the unknown things. Style is ephemeral – Form is eternal". It was this he imbued to his students at the Borough Polytechnic in such an inspiring way. This teaching role, which he held from 1944, brought him in contact with talented young artists willing to absorb his ideas - his two most famous students being Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach.



El Greco (1541-1614) View of Toledo, 1596-1600.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Pic:Wikimedia Commons

 Ronda in Spain (some 40 miles west of Malaga) spans a deep gorge over the river Guadalgorce. It inspired some of Bomberg’s finest landscapes. The drawing uses energetic strokes of charcoal to fix the dramatically situated town to the mountainside, and to create a vertiginous sensation as the viewer looks across the river valley. Broad smears of charcoal render space and shadow and agressive erasing cuts through to create form.


Drawing, for me, is at its best when recording the movement of the artist: Bomberg is visible to us here moving across the sheet, led by the eye and  his sense of the mass of the landscape in front of him. Here he evokes El Greco’s views of Toledo in both the striking setting and in the bold handling and atmospheric high-contrast tonal palette of the work.

In 1954 he and his wife Lillian had moved to Spain with a view to founding an art school in the Ronda region but this proved unsuccessful. Lillian collapsed under the strain and Bomberg returned to Britain, where he died a year later.

Kristian Purcell,

Curatorial Assistant

Note:

Before our lovely new News from the stores blog we used to post our picture/object of the week feature on the main gallery & museum blog but you can still find them all here: Picture of the Week 09/10

Moving Our Sarcophagus

Although I am known as The Keeper of Archaeology I look after our collections of Ethnographic objects and Coins as well as Archaeology.  Our recent task of packing up and moving our collections has meant that we have  handled thousands of objects of all different shapes, sizes and more crucially weight .This work  has certainly  been a challenge both mentally and physically but there has been an exciting and rewarding up- side to the job too.

Moving our collections off-site has been a brilliant opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with a wide variety of objects.  Many of our larger, freestanding items sited around the museum have been on display for many years and have become so familiar that it has been all too easy to not take the time to look at them closely.  

One such item is the large stone Sarcophagus dating to Roman times which used to be on display outside under cover by the main door into the museum. The first thing to do was to find out what the size of the problem was going to be. The sarcophagus is 2m long, 50cm high and 60cm wide and it's estimated weight is 1 tonne!!! It was pretty obvious that moving the sarcophagus safely would require expert skills. 

When the day came to move the sarcophagus even the experts were a little taken a back by its' sheer weight but with modern day pallet trucks and their experience the coffin was slowly manoeuvred out into the courtyard. Once there the packing could begin. Amazingly the whole operation of moving, packing and loading was accomplished very quickly and painlessly. The sarcophagus then had a short journey to the stores where it is safely" parked" along side the variety of other objects.

Though this brief tale may not seem very remarkable it becomes more exciting when you stop to think about it in more detail. Things like how and where was our stone coffin made?  How was it transported to where it was used and lastly who was such a fine funereal monument made for? I find it amazing that such a large archaeological artefact such as this has survived so perfectly since Roman times. Where has it been all of these years? Often large stone items are reused and become damaged over time but this coffin is in near perfect condition considering its age. 

Trying to find out more about our objects is the next part of my job that I am looking forward to. We may be able to unearth some answers to our questions related to the wealthy Roman living on the countryside sometime in the 2^nd century AD; but others I suspect will have to remain unanswered.

Liz, Keeper of Archaeology 

Object of the Week: Gainsborough revealed

With the gallery and museum closed for so long, we're always very happy when one of our pictures goes out on loan to another museum where it can be viewed by the public, rather than sitting in our now very full stores.

Thomas Gainsborough RA (1727-88) study for Diana and Actaeon, 1784-5,
black chalk and wash, heightened with white on paper

The latest picture to travel from Bedford is Thomas Gainsborough's study for Diana and Actaeon. It made the journey to Sudbury in Suffolk to celebrate 50 years since Gainsborough's House opened to the public and to be part of an exhibition that examines Gainsborough's only exploration into mythological subject matter. The study from the Cecil Higgins Collection is the final study of three for an oil painting now in the Royal Collection (you can see the work here).

The story of Diana and Acteon is told in the third book of Metamorphoses, a long narrative poem by the Roman poet Ovid. Ovid brought together in his poem many myths that had been written in many variations in earlier texts, selecting the versions he felt were best and using the Roman names for the gods that are also known by their Greek names. For artists depicting myths in paintings in the 16th to 18th centuries it was the key work and few artists would have been unfamiliar with it. In this story Diana (or Artemis to the Greeks) is bathing with her nymphs after a hunt in:

...a spacious grotto, all around o'er-grown
With hoary moss, and arch'd with pumice-stone.

Acteon, who has also just finished hunting, comes to the clearing and disturbs the bathing party, frightening the nymphs and angering Diana. A virgin goddess, Diana furiously protects her modesty and in anger throws water at Acteon which transforms him into a stag:

...the man begun to disappear
By slow degrees, and ended in a deer.
A rising horn on either brow he wears...

Actaeon then flees from the scene but only lands in more trouble as he encounters his hounds who do not recognise him and pounce on him, tearing him to pieces. As he lies dying on the ground his hunting party call for their lord Actaeon to celebrate the caught stag, and he can only wish he wasn't so near to the gory scene as to be a part of it.

Gainsborough's depiction takes a more remote viewpoint from the famous painting by Titian, where Diana's sidelong glance at Actaeon delivers all her fury and vengeance at the unsuspecting hunter. The scene is more tranquil and the figures looser; Actaeon's antlers have started to appear but the group of goddess and nymphs seem calm. In both painting and the Cecil Higgins study, Acteon is rendered in the same way as the trees and rocks, with loose handling of black chalk and wash, where the bathers shine out with the lightest areas of the paper and dazzling white chalk. Diana is the standing figure in the centre; her arms reach out to fling the magical water at the intruder. Gainsborough is clearly as interested in the woodland scene as much as the myth taking place within it, and makes it almost feel the most natural thing to chance upon a goddess bathing in the English countryside.

Gainsborough had not turned to mythological subjects before and never exhibited the picture but he was in the last years of his life with a swollen neck from cancer and was perhaps reflecting on his life in a different way, on his passion for the suffolk landscape and his own love of beauty. (Andrew Graham Dixon has written more on his website about the relationship of this picture with Gainsborough's terminal illness and his impending death.)

You can see 'Gainsborough's Diana and Actaeon Revealed' at Gainsborough House, Sudbury, Suffolk until 17th Septmeber 2011.

Kristian Purcell

No ‘Rogue Traders’ allowed

The Smoking Room, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery & Bedford Museum

Walking through the Victorian Mansion (as it was), you would have been forgiven for thinking that the oak panels in the smoking room were an original feature of the house. In fact they were designed by the architect Norman Shaw for the Partners' Dining Room at 8 Bishopsgate Road, London, the headquarters of Baring Bank & Co Ltd. Before its collapse in the '90s (after employee Nick Leeson lost $1.3 billion dollars in speculative investments), Barings was one of London’s oldest financial institutions and had been trading since 1762, moving into Bishopsgate in 1806 and remaining there until the bank's collapse in 1995.

Originally, the building had been a Georgian style house but over the years it underwent several expansions and refurbishments, including in the 1880s work by Norman Shaw who was employed to redesign the frontage and some of the rooms inside, all in his typical Queen Ann style.


Unfortunately the building was demolished in the 1980s to make way for a wider road and was replaced by a skyscraper. Before the wrecking ball struck the bank donated parts of the building to museums across the country. The Ground Floor waiting room went to the Bowes Museum in County Durham, the Board Room and Ante Room went to Southampton City Art Gallery (where it provides a back drop for Edward Burne-Jones’ ‘Perseus Cycle’), parts of the Banking Hall went to the Museum of London, where it is displayed as a room setting in the Victorian Walk, while the Partners' Dining Room came to Cecil Higgins Art Gallery.

The Partners' Dining Room, 8 Bishopsgate Road

The panelling was installed in the Higgins house in the mid '70s, and although the room was a different shape to the original Dining Room, much was done to avoid altering it to fit.

Back of a piece of panelling with an original label for the 'Luncheon Room'

Now, thirty years later, the panelling has come down, and as carefully as it was put up we have been equally careful taking it down, hiring professional furniture conservators who catalogued each piece, so that when the builders have finished we can reinstall the room and know exactly which piece goes where (much like a jigsaw but with very, very heavy pieces).

Thankfully a lot of the panelling is in large sections (those lifting the sections were obviously not quite as thankful!), apart from the fireplace which seems to be the most complex part with several large sections of marble, iron and wood making up what looks at first viewing like one piece.

The Conservators closely examining the fireplace

The good news is that the panelling is in really good condition, considering its various past lives. All it will need before it is put back is a clean and a polish, leaving it with a secure investment for its future.

Victoria Partridge,
Keeper of Fine and Decorative Art

Object of the Week - John Bull's golden bull

Our object of the week is this golden bull, which adorned John Bull’s Jewellery and Silversmith’s at 49 High Street, Bedford. John Bull’s was established in 1817. Today you can see a replica of the bull above the old shop.



John Bull's bull



A golden bull and a clock were commissioned by John Bull’s sons in 1870 following a major refurbishment of the shop. It was designed to be an innovative piece of signage to get the shop noticed and to be symbolic of the company name. Later, in 1884, a golden ball was added that would drop and hit a bell at exactly 10am – it was triggered by an electrical signal sent from Greenwich and local people and travellers on the A6 would regularly set their own clocks by it.

John Bull & Co. in the late 19th century

John Bull’s shop moved premises during the 1960s to St. Peter’s Street, where it is still open today. In 1974, the Council decided that, due to deterioration, the original bull should be taken down and it was at this time it came to the Art Gallery & Museum. It caused quite an outcry from local residents, who were obviously attached to this local landmark. Because of this, a replica was made to replace the original.

The replica bull as it appears today

The original bull was made from wood, so it is not surprising that it was rotting away due to weathering and required some attention. It has recently been restored by a conservator – you can see some ‘before and after’ pictures below.



In need of some tlc...



...and looking almost as good as new



We’re looking forward to being able to display the golden bull when the Art Gallery & Museum reopen following the redevelopment project. In the meantime, do let us know if you have your own memories of the original John Bull clock and bull.

You might also like to take a look at the Bedford High Street History Project blog and find out more about Bedford Central Library's recent project Half a Pound of Tuppeny Rice, Half a Pound of Treacle: Shopping in Bedford High Street, c.1800 – 1970.

Lydia

@lydiavicky

Off the hook – moving our telephone box

One of the larger (or certainly heavier) objects in the collection is telephone box that used to be on display in the museum courtyard.

Donated in 1988, when the previous owners were moving house, the telephone box had originally been installed in Potton Road on the Stratton Way Estate in Biggleswade.

The box is a K6 Mark 2 (EIIR) kiosk design, which came into service in 1953 to coincide with the ascension to the throne of Queen Elizabeth II. We can tell this from the design of the windows as well as from the crown. In total, there were 25,000 made between 1953 and 1968 – ours dates from 1958.

Just like every other object in the courtyard, the telephone box had to be moved offsite to keep it safe during the redevelopment work. The main problem with this was its overall weight – estimated at three quarters of a tonne - due to the cast iron exterior and the concrete cemented into its base.

We also discovered that the height of the telephone box was too tall for the removal van, as the top section of the box could not be detached. This meant we had to lay the box down in the vehicle to transported it offsite. With the assistance of the hydraulic tail lift, as well as many hands, the telephone box made it into (and out of) the vehicle unscathed.

We hope you enjoy watching the video of the telephone box being loaded onto the removal lorry – it was quite an operation, as you’ll see, and we were relieved at the end of the day to be let off the hook.

If you’d like to see more public telephone kiosks and other telecoms objects in museums across the country, you can find out more about BT’s Connected Earth initiative here  www.connected-earth.com/artefacts

@lydiavicky

Object of the Week - Lucy

Welcome to the first of our new Object of the Week posts, where we'll be featuring staff and volunteer picks from the collections. This part of our blogging activity will incorporate our previous Picture of the Week posts, which appeared over on the main blog, but will now include selections from the whole of the Art Gallery & Museum collections, so expect everything from archaeology to art, and plenty in-between! 

To get things started, I thought it was about time that we explained the photograph used in the banner at the top of the page, so this week's pick is Lucy the Locust.



Lucy in her display box


I first came across Lucy when we were in the planning stages of our recent packing project. Despite the fact that Lucy was hiding on a slightly neglected shelf in the corner of the Natural History Store, it was hard not to notice her - a large insect (she's about 70mm long), nestling on a bed of cotton wool in a rather smart black display box.

What really grabbed my attention, though, was the label on the box: "'Lucy' Lived in the Museum 6 Feb - 9 Oct 1929". This immediately got me thinking - who had owned Lucy? Where had she come from? And why was she kept at the museum?

We've had some fantastic support recently from members of the Bedfordshire Natural History Society, who've been volunteering a great deal of time to help with packing the collections. One of our volunteers thought they might be able to help get a proper identification, so Lucy was very carefully removed from her box and photographed.



Lucy posing for her identification shot


This photo was posted on iSpot, a website aimed at helping people identify things in the natural world. Within minutes, Lucy had been identified (you can see the results here) as an Egyptian Grasshopper (Anacridium aegyptium), a circum-Mediterranean species. A big indicator is the striped eyes.

Lucy's page on iSpot

It has been known for Egyptian Grasshoppers to have been accidentally introduced into this country on produce, something which apparently still happens from time-to-time today. There's a strong chance, then, that Lucy was a stowaway on produce imported into Bedford from somewhere in the Mediterranean and that she was then brought into the museum, where she became one of the more unusual exhibits! 

But might there be another explanation? Around this time (the late 1920s), the Bedford Modern School Museum (as it was then) was under the curatorship of PG "Piggie" Langdon and a number of Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Mediterranean antiquities were entering the collection. Might Lucy have been accidentally brought over in a packing crate? It's a very remote possibility I admit, but it would make a lovely story.

Tom

All hands to the pump - moving the Sharnbrook fire engine

Our 19^th century horse-drawn manual fire engine is one of my favourite objects in the collection here, but definitely proved one of the most challenging to move as part of our big packing project. 

The engine was used by the Sharnbrook Volunteer Fire Brigade, founded by Daniel Hipwell of Stoke Mills, from 1832 until the early 20th century.



The fire engine on display


It was one of the most difficult objects to move because of its size and the fact that it had been on display in a first floor gallery since the early 1980’s. The challenge was how to get it out of the building via some fairly narrow stairs and a small goods lift!

Early on we consulted a specialist removal firm and it was decided that the only feasible solution would be to separate it into its component parts. This would need to be done very delicately to avoid damaging the restored paint work and in order to support the overall structure throughout the operation.



Carefully separating each part, from big...



...to small

We discovered that the engine had been taken apart for some restoration work when it was first displayed at the Museum in 1984. At this time, it had been restored back to its original colours of blue and orange.

The gradual dismantling of the engine was a very time consuming process, each part needing assessment to ensure the support and safety of both the object and those working on it.

First of all, the driving seat and the top section of the engine were lifted off with relative ease. Next, the iron and wood pumping arm mechanism was removed. The really tricky part was removing the hefty wheel axels from underneath the core base unit, which was done with a great deal of care.

Heading to the lift...

To get the larger components of the vehicle out of the building, some of the old display panels and furniture had to be taken apart to access the lift and stairs. We were all grateful that the two main sections of the body of the fire engine just about squeezed into the lift (with millimetres to spare!).

...and onto the movers' vehicle

The fire engine successfully made it into our store and was partially reconnected together, ready and waiting to be redisplayed – perhaps we will avoid placing such a big vehicle on the first floor in the future!

Lydia