Bring Up the Bodies

Recently the Museum caused a social media sensation by offering some of its old mannequins and body parts to a good home. I was reminded of that experience of going viral when we had to dismantle and move the mannequins from the Solar display area a couple of weeks ago. Taking them up into the loft space for storage was a strange and slightly surreal experience as you can see.

The carpet beetle drive continues. If you can offer time to help pack the clothes, ready for freezing, or if you know anyone with a walk in freezer to share, please get in touch with The Old House Museum.

Cotton Tales

The carpet beetle story continues. There's a freezer full of packed clothes in the Museum and volunteers have prepared packages for the next phase. An application is nearly ready to go to AIM, the Association of Independent Museums for their next round of funding. A pest control expert has been to assess and his report is eagerly awaited. It's a huge amount of work and an unexpected task to have to deal with in the middle of the busy summer open season, but it is all progressing as it must thanks to manager Anita Spencer and the volunteers. One piece of good news is that cotton items may not need freezing. There are a lot of them in the collection. It's an everyday, domestic material and many of the clothes are everyday and domestic. Advice is being taken, as cottons and linens can be delicate, especially when the fabrics are old. Hopefully we will be able to wash some of them. If they can cope with dolly tubs and possers, boilers and smoothing irons, hopefully they can cope with some specialist laundering. As a bit of light relief I visited the Cotton Couture exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery. These beautiful outfits were commissioned by the Cotton Board In the mid 1950s to promote cotton in its heartland of manufacture. The exhibition runs through until June 2015, so catch it if you can. The wedding dress and cotton lace ensemble, ideal for the mother of the bride, are on show. The lovely turquoise print dress from the late 1950s, early 1960s is one of the most recent items in the Museum's collection and would be snapped up in a vintage shop nowadays.

What's in your wardrobe?

Recent posts have been themed around pests, infestations, vermin and how to keep them out of clothes. The Old House Museum is partly a Tudor house place. Later it was divided into tenement cottages for Sir Richard Arkwright, housing workers from his mill at Lumford in Bakewell. Eventually these cottages were condemned in the mid twentieth century, though one continued to be lived in until the 1960s. In the late 19th century a family called the Pitts lived there. Mr Pitt collected euphemistically named night soil, the contents of the earth closet toilets that were a feature of houses with no mains sewage. When the Bakewell and District Historical Society began the process of renovating and restoring the Old House they uncovered fireplaces and a secret room. At first it was thought it might be a priest hole, but the Gell family who had built the house were not Roman Catholics. Building historians identified this secret room as a garderobe. A garderobe was an inside toilet, usually with a drop into an earth closet. There are some at Haddon Hall which drained to the outside wall of the house, down the limestone bluff the Hall stands on. It was the height of luxury, and those who would have access to a garderobe would have some luxury items among their clothes and outfits. They knew that the smell of ammonia from these inside toilets discouraged clothes moths and insect infestations, so precious furs and silks were hung in the garderobe. You may have guessed the connection, a closet in a bedroom used for hanging clothes. This is the origin of the modern day wardrobe! You can still see the garderobe if you visit the Old House Museum.

Of lice and men

In the last post on this blog I wrote about the recent discovery of carpet beetle at the Old House Museum. In recognition of the centenary of the First World War, there is a display of WW1 uniform, as well as items of WW2 uniform in the museum. Many years ago I remember talking to one of my elderly neighbours.I knew very little about the Great War. I was familiar with the War Poets from English A level, but I hadn't yet discovered Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. My neighbour was very familiar with the realities and described how she got rid of the lice in her brother's uniform when he returned home on leave, running a lighted match down the seams. The trenches were full of all kinds of vermin, from body lice to rats, as well as sewage and the rotting corpses of men and animals. It's unbearable to think of it, and infection quickly set in to any wounds or bites. Uniforms could also be boiled to clear them of lice, but it didn't get rid of the eggs, which soon hatched out and reinfested the soldiers on their return to the front. Today, August 4th 2014, marks the centenary of the declaration of war. You may light a candle of commemoration tonight. When you do, spare a thought for the mothers, sisters and wives who tried to make things more bearable for their men in uniform.