We're coming to the end of the season, but as our last open day is actually on Sunday 31st of October there's still a chance to join us for some Halloween fun! We've really enjoyed welcoming Burwell Rainbows, Brownies and Guides to test drive our spooky activities and now we're ready to welcome visitors on Thursday 28th and Sunday 31st. We'd like to thank everyone who has supported us over the last two years as we hope for a better time next year!
It's really nice to see visitors out and about and enjoying the museum again - it's much nicer to sit and do admin when there are children learning to hula hoop outside the family room! We had a really good day at the summer fete, thanks to the musicians and our wonderful volunteers, and now we are getting stuck into "arty afternoons" with our summer holiday activities from 1.30-3.30 every Thursday in August. Today we've been making faces to decorate the bus windows, then later in the summer we'll be making our own stocks, making rubbings of different materials at the museum and creating amazing models out of recycled materials.
The mill team are also planning a bit of decorating, with plans to refresh the tar on the outside of the mill over the two weeks between the 10th and 22nd of August. This is a messy job and we're very grateful to the team for all of their hard work. It will mean that we can't welcome visitors to the mill during that time as the tar is very difficult to get off if you accidentally brush against it! We're always looking for new members of the mill team, so if you know anyone who is free on a Tuesday and would like to learn some new skills and learn more about historic milling, please let them know about us.
We hope everyone has a great summer!
Thank you very much to everyone who has supported us this year either by
volunteering or by coming to the museum on an open day or event day. Our
volunteers have been particularly busy and you may have noticed that the
windmill now has the shutters in its sails again – many thanks to the mill team
for their extra days of work and to the site team for getting everything ready
for the arrival of the cherry picker.
We’ve really enjoyed welcoming visitors back and it’s been great to see
families, adult groups, cubs and schools enjoying our events and education
programme. You can book a visit for a group by contacting Alison on education@burwellmuseum.org.uk – we are open to the
public on Thursdays and Sundays from 11-5 but other days and times are also
available by arrangement.
During the summer holidays we are participating in the “Summer at the
Museums” scheme run by the University of Cambridge Museums, so you are welcome
to join us for “arty afternoons” on Thursdays between 1.30 and 3.30. Drop in
activities – all welcome, but activities will be aimed at 7-11-year-olds. We’re
still deciding what we’re going to do because we need to keep an eye on staying
COVID safe, so watch out for posters and social media posts to find out more
about the different activities each week. We’ll also be taking part in Heritage
Open Days so look out for free entry and musical entertainment on Sunday 19th
September!
The mill and museum are mostly run by volunteers and we’d love to have
more help, so contact us on volunteers@burwellmuseum.org.uk for more information
if you have some time to spare and could help with maintenance, front of house,
fundraising and publicity or by becoming a trustee.
The mill shutters in
the process of being replaced in July
Burwell Museum: Welcome back!
Thank you very much to everyone who supported our opening event on the 23rd of May. We’re incredibly grateful to Pat Kilbey and the Burwell musicians for all their help over lockdown and as we reopen. We’re really glad to have almost everything back open at the museum now, and we’re grateful for everyone’s patience as we wait for it to be safe to open the upper floors of the mill again.
Our next event will be the summer fete, which will be on the 25th of July from 11am to 5pm. We’ll have the musicians again and hope for a lovely summer day to enjoy the museum at its best. As with everything this year, keep an eye on our social media and on posters around the village for exact details as we work out what we can safely do to enjoy the museum together.
As we get back to having volunteers on site it would be great to welcome some new ones, and our mill team is particularly keen to have more members as we catch up with vital maintenance work! If you are free on a Tuesday, enjoy working on practical tasks as part of a team and would like to learn more about the windmill and how you can help it to keep working, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact Alison on volunteers@burwellmuseum.org.uk for more information, or feel free to drop by on a Tuesday morning for a chat. We’re also looking for more people for front of house shifts on Thursdays and Sundays if you’d prefer that.
Could you help keep the sails turning? We’re looking for new members for the mill team!
This is a slightly tricky post to write, because it looks like we will be able to go ahead with opening on the 20th of May but I have a superstitious feeling that as soon as I have written that down everything will go horribly wrong again! Providing it doesn't, this is what the next couple of months have in store at the museum:
We will be holding our reopening event from 11am to 5pm on Sunday 23rd May - I'll put up full details the week before when we have official confirmation that it will happen (or not). We’re incredibly grateful to Pat Kilbey and the Burwell musicians for all their help over lockdown and as we reopen. We’re looking forward to having almost everything back open at the museum now, and we’re grateful for everyone’s patience as we wait for it to be safe to open the upper floors of the mill again.
Our next event will be the summer fete, which will be on the 25th of July from 11am to 5pm. We’ll have the musicians again and hope for a lovely summer day to enjoy the museum at it’s best. As with everything this year, keep an eye on our social media and on posters around the village for exact details as we work out what we can safely do to enjoy the museum together.
As we get back to having volunteers on site it would be great to welcome some new ones, and our mill team is particularly keen to have more members as we catch up with vital maintenance work! If you are free on a Tuesday, enjoy working on practical tasks as part of a team and would like to learn more about the windmill and how you can help it to keep working, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact Alison on volunteers@burwellmuseum.org.uk for more information, or feel free to drop by on a Tuesday morning for a chat. We’re also looking for more people for front of house shifts on Thursdays and Sundays if you’d prefer that.
Usually this post would be all about our fabulous start of season events, but of course things continue to be different this year! As I write, museums are not allowed to open to the public until the 17th of May at the earliest, making our first day Thursday 20th May and our opening event Sunday 23rd May. Of course, that depends on everything going smoothly with the “road map” out of lockdown, so please keep an eye out online and for posters around the village to find out what we’re up to. We’d love to welcome you back but we want to make sure that it’s safe to do so.
While we’re closed to the public, our wonderful volunteers have been busy over the last few months and we’re making some improvements to our site. The biggest change will be a new path up the side of the mill and a more accessible entrance to the mill itself - the photo shows the work in progress. We’re very grateful to Martin Mead and his team for the building work and to the Co-op community fund and the Cambridge branch of John Lewis and partners for funding this project, which will help more people to be able to access the windmill safely and comfortably. When we told them that the path was being built, Christine Shaw said “at John Lewis & Partners, we appreciate the local area we work in and enjoy being able to give back to the local community, as it’s a way of saying thank you for your support and our Partners in the Cambridge shop will also have the added benefit of being able to visit this amazing local museum”. Steve Smith, who is a great supporter of the museum above and beyond the community fund, said “I’d just like to say what a pleasure it’s been to work with and support the museum through being one of our local causes and also by collaborating on community events. We are so pleased that funds raised have gone to support works on the grounds and hope this benefits so many in the community for years to come. Also we look forward to post covid times and planning future events with them”.
We’re also planning a new shed on site so that we can get things better organised. We always welcome new volunteers, although at the moment there are some restrictions on what we can do - if you’re interested in helping the museum then please contact Alison on education@burwellmuseum.org.uk to find out more.
Understandably, not much is going on at the moment - our staff and volunteers are doing what they can at home, with a much-appreciated rota of locally based volunteers keeping an eye on the museum to make sure that nothing is going wrong on site. We're more than usually grateful to our regular mill and site maintenance volunteers for keeping things in a state where we are able to safely leave things alone for a little while. However, the winter is usually our time for tackling big tasks on site, so we haven't completely stopped. We're hoping that February and March will see two major projects:
1. An improved path to get onto site from Mill Close, and better access to the mill itself - this should help visitors who find the slope onto the museum site and the steep slope into the mill a challenge. We're very grateful to the Co-op and to John Lewis for providing the money for this and we're really excited to be getting close to getting it ready for whenever we're able to welcome visitors again.
2. A new shed so that we can start decluttering our workshop and making sure that everyone has the space they need to work and store everything on site. Admittedly this is probably more exciting for our volunteers than for the general public, but it will help to keep the site running and allow us to continue looking after our buildings and collections for everyone to enjoy!
After that we've still got our fingers crossed that we will be able to open to at least some extent as planned on Easter Sunday (4th April), but we haven't planned any of our usual events because things are just too uncertain. We'll keep everyone informed of any last-minute plans through the blog, newsletter, website and social media, so please keep an eye out for news - we're very grateful for your support!
