Thank you for an amazing season in 2019!

Many, many thanks from all at Burwell Museum and Windmill!

Thank you to everyone who has supported, visited and/or volunteered at Burwell Museum and Windmill this year. We’ve had over 3,500 visitors over the year and our amazing volunteers have put in over 4,000 hours between them to make sure that the museum continues to be a really great day out. We’re also very grateful to the Parish Council, the Carnival, Cambridgeshire County Council and Newmarket Waitrose for financial support over the year, and to Newmarket Tesco and Burwell Co-op for giving us gifts in kind (and in the Co-op’s case lots of very much appreciated staff time). Thank you to everyone who has been to the museum either as a visitor or a volunteer in 2019!

Do you have any time to spare?

Although we are now closed to visitors for the winter, there is still a lot going on behind the scenes and WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Are you enthusiastic, community-minded and want to offer some time to a local charity? If this sounds like you then please get in touch about becoming a volunteer with the museum. No previous experience required and you'll receive a very warm welcome! We're especially looking for:

Mill volunteers: We need more people to help with the Mill as we work to prepare for its 200th birthday next year. Mill volunteers work on Tuesdays, usually from around 9.30am until 4pm. You don't have to commit to every Tuesday but it's helpful if you are able to say in advance when you will be there so that work can be planned. Jobs range from routine maintenance tasks to operating the mill itself; full training is provided for the jobs involved. If you want to find out more, you are welcome to come to the museum on a Tuesday or to contact Colin, our Mill manager, on cmarshall@cantab.net.

Site maintenance volunteers: Keeping the museum site going needs lots of people for a wide range of jobs including painting, repairing things and keeping all of our buildings clean and tidy. Previous experience of plumbing, electrics, IT systems etc. would be massively useful but there are plenty of jobs which don't require specialist skills! If you can spare us time on a Tuesday or Thursday to help either with a specific job or with general maintenance tasks, we'd love to hear from you at volunteers@burwellmuseum.org.uk or on 01638 605544.

We've had a great summer at the museum!

The last of our children's holiday activities went well today, with lots of people planting cress seeds to learn about our farming heritage. We've had a great summer all round (helped by some wonderful weather) and it's been great to welcome so many people to our children's activities. We've also welcomed groups from two WIs, Felix Coaches, a car club and the Mother's Union. Now we're looking forward to Heritage Open Days, which for us will be on the 15th, 19th and 22nd of September. On the 15th and 19th we're offering free entry to the museum, then on the 22nd we have our folk celebration with local musicians and dancers. We'll be looking at "People Power" through our collections, including a special guest appearance by the winning soapbox from the Newmarket Soapbox Derby.

Settling into the summer

We had a very warm start to our summer holiday activities, with record temperatures in Cambridgeshire last Thursday, but we're hoping to return to normal with light drizzle expected this week! We'll be spending the summer holidays finding out about different materials on Thursday afternoons; we made some amazing trophies for all sorts of achievements last week and I've spent some of this morning sawing up clothes pegs to make rag rugging tools for this week's work on cloth. If you're a little bit old for that sort of thing (although there's no age limit, everyone is welcome!) then we still have our temporary exhibition about Burwell's industrial history and all of our usual exhibition spaces (see map below) and the fine weather is a great time to come and explore our indoor and outdoor spaces.

Looking forward to the summer

It's really glorious weather at the museum as I'm writing this and we hope it continues as we start a jam-packed summer of events! We'll celebrate the start of the summer holidays with our summer fete on the 21st of July, with a packed line up of local musicians, and then explore what history is made of with children's activities every Thursday afternoon from 1.30 to 4.30. Come and hear stories, take part in craft activities and explore the museum's collections to find out about different materials, starting with metal on the 25th of July.

A busy couple of weeks!

We had a great end to last month with the first of our "history is made of..." school holiday activities, with lots of families joining us to find out about bones, plastic and carbolic soap! The activities will continue every Thursday in the summer holidays so that visitors can explore the whole of the museum collection by looking at what it's made of.
June is the peak of the museum season, although as I write the rain seems to be putting people off a bit. We're really hoping for good weather next week, when we have three different WI group visits , our usual U3A French conversation class on Thursday and then Classic Car day on Sunday. Then we'll round off the month with a visit from Mepal and Witcham, one of our favourite schools. We've welcomed several new volunteers this year but we could still do with more; let us know if you'd like to get involved!