NEWS RELEASES
Past Success and Future Plans for Horsham Museum
19th December 2006
That Was the Year That Was: 2006
Horsham Museum began the year with a major temporary exhibition, Naked Horsham, but finished being clothed in underwear in “Revealing Layers”. Naked Horsham was one of two events that celebrated the granting of the charter that created the Borough of Horsham. The other event was the publication of a monumental history of the town to raise money for the Museum’s Purchase Fund.
The Purchase Fund itself was used to buy some remarkable additions to both the town and the district history, including letters written to and by Hilaire Belloc, who lived at Shipley, as well as a manuscript poem. Another significant acquisition was a letter written by Slinfold-born world athlete Alfred Shrub talking about his disqualification from the world of amateur sport. Both purchases were made with the assistance of Horsham Museum Society as was an oil painting from America by Horsham-born, internationally renowned artist Raoul Millais, and grandson of Sir John Everett Millais. Along with the oil painting, the Museum acquired both a fine ink and a pastel drawing, all showing Raoul’s love of animals.
In June it was discovered that moths had set up home in the costume collection feasting on such delicacies as early 20th century furs. Although tenacious, slowly but surely the invader is being repelled. The Museum volunteers rigorously checked every item of clothing ensuring that all traces of moths were destroyed. We also invested in a deep freeze that takes the temperature down to minus 30ºc to kill any remaining traces not visible to the naked eye.
The invasion of moths was an unwelcome strain on resources; however, the invasion by curious children and adults was, by contrast, a welcome sight as they flooded in to the Museum to look at the dinosaur fossils found by George Bax Holmes, Horsham’s own Victorian Dinosaur hunter. For the first time since their discovery in 1840 the great Horsham Dinosaur had returned. Southwater residents can currently see “iggy’s” bones at their local library in an exhibition created by the Museum to mark the momentous development, Lintot Square.
2007 will be a year of Eastern Promise at the Museum, packed full of exciting events covering both home and abroad. The full museum treatment will also reveal a local dimension to the national celebrations over the abolition of slavery and the centenary of the Scouting Movement.
For further information please contact Jeremy Knight, Curator.
Horsham Museum, 9 Causeway, Horsham, West Sussex RH12 1HE
Tel: (01403) 254959
Fax: (01403) 282594
Email: museum@horsham.gov.uk
Website: www.horshammuseum.org