Curator’s Newsletter June 2011

From Mary Godwin, Curator of Lyme Regis Museum:

Water Way to Have a Good Time!
May has flown by in a flurry of activity, mostly involving boats and maritime history! One of the highlights was the launch of the lerret off the very steep shingle bank at Cobb Gate on the stormy morning of 22nd May. It was an exciting and rather scary moment but, having been designed for such launchings, she went into the water like a duckling! I was rather concerned as I had encouraged Roger Goulding, regional committee member of the Heritage Lottery Fund (who have funded our lerret project) to get into the boat to be rowed across to the Cobb. Despite being much more smartly dressed than the rest of us, Roger very nobly rose to the challenge and as seawater started to gently seep into the boat half way across, simply lifted his feet up to keep dry!

 More Maritime Lyme events are coming up. On 8th June from 6pm is the preview of our new Rotunda exhibition ‘Disappearing Walks’ by Annabel Ralphs, to which everyone is welcome. From 13th-19th June we have Maritime Walks Week. A great programme of varied walks is on offer, with excellent guides including Gail McGarva and Richard Edmonds. See the museum’s printed programme or the website for full details – not to be missed! And if you haven’t purchased one already, don’t forget to buy your copy of Ebb & Flow – The Story of Maritime Lyme, written by Peter Lacey. The museum shop has copies signed by the author.

Representing the Museum
I’m looking for people who might be prepared to be the museum’s representative on a variety of groups including the Dorset Museums Association, Dorset Archaeological Committee, Dorset History Forum and even Devon Museums Group in which we are included due to our ‘virtually in Devon’ status! Meetings of these groups are infrequent and travel expenses will be paid. All I ask is for a brief update on anything of importance/relevance to us. It’s important for us to keep our wider networks going and it can often be very enjoyable meeting people from other museums and organisations. Please get in touch if this might be of interest.

Games Monitor Needed!
Our collection of dressing up clothes, books and simple games is very popular with families who visit the museum. Our substantial visitor numbers mean that they take quite a beating and I’m looking for a person/persons to take on their care and improvement. This would include cleaning and repairing the dressing-up clothes, checking, maintaining and replacing the games and generally making improvements to our children’s activities. If anyone is interested in helping, please do get in touch.

Flyers Further Afield
We would like to get our quarterly museum events leaflet and the Maritime Lyme leaflet to these locations further afield: Charmouth, Beer, Honiton, Sidmouth, Taunton, Exeter, Dorchester, West Bay, Abbotsbury, Weymouth, Beaminster, Chard and Crewkerne. If you make regular visits to any of these places and would be prepared take a stock of both leaflets to the TIC and museums and keep them topped up every few weeks, we’d be thrilled to hear from you. Carole Halden is covering Uplyme, Lorraine Chamen is covering Bridport and Karol Kulik is covering Yeovil, Sherborne and Seaton! If you can help, please contact the Museum or leave a comment below.

Theatre Tickets
We’re resurrecting the Great Monthly Theatre Ticket Draw! All volunteers’ names will go into a hat to decide who wins two tickets for one of the professional performances at the Marine Theatre. And the winner for June is Robert Ashford.