Getting back to Burwell Museum - reopening 6th August

Like everyone, we've been watching the development of government advice and trying to work out what we can do and when. We've decided that we can open some bits of the museum to the public again from Thursday the 6th of August, but because we can't offer a full service we will operate on a donation only basis. We don't want to put any pressure on anyone to visit before they're ready to come out, but we want to provide a service to those who want to use it through the school summer holidays. We're very grateful to everyone who is following us and wishing us well, and we hope to see you when you feel it's right for you! For now, here are our guidelines for opening from next week: 

Welcome back to Burwell Museum! 

You are welcome to:

Visit us on a Thursday between 11am and 3pm

Enjoy our outdoor spaces

Bring your own food and drink and have a picnic

Explore the Upper Gallery, Roman Pottery and Waggon Sheds

See our new exhibition on Burwell Shops in the Hub

Use some of our outdoor toys

Admire the outside of the mill and farm buildings

Use some of our hands-on exhibits (use hand sanitiser afterwards)

Use our toilets - we will clean thoroughly before each open day

Choose whether or not to make a donation to the museum, and how much. Because we can’t offer our full facilities yet entry to the museum will be free, but donations are always appreciated! 

We're sorry, but to keep us all safe we can’t yet allow you to: 

Visit on any other days

Explore the mill, barn, vintage clothing, vehicles or Nissen Hut

Use dressing up clothes, crafts, indoor toys or handling objects 

Use the tea room

Please help us by:

Giving us a name and contact number for track and trace

Following government guidance on social distancing

Washing your hands carefully after using the toilets

Using hand sanitiser regularly at stations around the museum 

Using the bins provided to dispose of your own rubbish

Checking our website and social media for last-minute changes

Telling us what we can improve about your visit, and telling other people if you enjoyed it!

Letting us know if you develop coronavirus symptoms after visiting.

Great news for the museum from the SHARE volunteer awards!

Burwell museum helpers scoop museum awards

Helpers at Burwell Museum and Windmill scooped three prestigious awards at the annual SHARE Museums East Volunteer Awards on Thursday 4th June.

The museum’s Mill Team topped the True Grit category, while volunteers Paul Hawes and John Wisbey each received Silver Owl awards for volunteering for (considerably) more than 25 years.

The winners were announced during a virtual ceremony held online due to social distancing rules and provided a welcome piece of good news for the volunteers, who are unable to continue with their work or open the museum due to coronavirus restrictions.

The True Grit award recognises unglamourous tasks, battling against difficulties, and doing often dirty and unappealing jobs that need specific skills.

The Mill Team was commended by Niki Hughes, Chair of SHARE Volunteer Co-Ordinators Forum, saying they keep the windmill’s wheel turning, are ‘truly inspirational’ and show ‘tenacity and teamwork’.

The team has contributed to the ongoing maintenance of Burwell’s 200-year-old Stevens’ Mill after extensive restoration over the past 40 years.

Burwell Museum and Windmill Administrator, Alison Giles, said: “It’s especially exciting to win this year, our 200th anniversary year, and great to have an opportunity to celebrate the work of our Mill Team, our longest-serving volunteers and all of the other fantastic winners and nominees."

“Burwell Museum was started by volunteers and we very much rely on their goodwill and skills to keep the museum and mill running. We’re very grateful to SHARE for putting on the awards and for their support for museums in the region, especially at this difficult time.”

The museum is planning to celebrate the achievements of the winners, as well as commemorate the 200th anniversary of the windmill later this year or early next year, once social distancing restrictions are lifted.

The awards ceremony can be viewed on YouTube here.

Burwell Museum Coronavirus update

Like everywhere, we don't really know what's going on at the moment, but here is an update on how things are for us right now: 

We are closed to both the public and volunteers for the foreseeable future. Most of the volunteers who keep us going are in the more "vulnerable" groups, as are a large proportion of our visitors, so we won't be reopening until it's very clear that it's safe to do so. Events in April and May have already been cancelled and it's likely that June will follow unless things change dramatically in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks to a grant from East Cambridgeshire District Council and a legacy last year from Mr Michael Mitcham, we're very lucky to be in a good position financially. We're very grateful to both the council and to Mr. Mitcham and his family for that, as it means we can continue to pay our staff during lockdown and spend the time making sure that our paperwork is all up to date (we'll spare you all the details, but it will be good to have it done!). Many small museums are struggling, though, so if you want to support local museums and industrial heritage then our friends at Prickwillow Museum, Ramsey Rural Museum and the Cambridge museum of Technology are among many appealing for help at the moment. 

Our ongoing projects will continue as soon as we can - we're still waiting for planning permission for the path to the windmill, so we'll need to wait until the council has finished dealing with the crisis, and once our volunteers are able to safely come back to work we will continue with site maintenance and refreshing displays. If you are going past the windmill you may notice that it's looking a bit bedraggled- we've removed most of the shutters to make sure it's safe while we're not working on it. Our next project will be to paint each shutter and put them back again, so although this isn't the kind of year we'd planned for the 200th anniversary year of the windmill we will get it looking smart again as soon as we can! 

We wish all of our volunteers, visitors and supporters well and hope to welcome you back when we can do so safely. 

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!

Events programme for the rest of the year

We had a great time at National Mills Weekend, welcoming over 250 visitors in the glorious weather and raising just under £500 for museum funds. Thank you very much to everyone who came, and to our wonderful musicians! Now we can concentrate on the rest of the year. Our events programme is:

23 May tea and talk: Burwell Brick and Tile works with Paul Hawes

30 May half term activities: Bone and more

13 June late opening for Burwell festival: free entry to the vintage vehicles gallery

15 June Burwell carnival

23 June Classic Car Day 

21 July Summer Fete

25 July to 29 August (Thursday afternoons) summer holiday activities: What is History made of?

15,19 and 22 September Heritage Open Days

24 October half term activities: Water

More information about all events can be found on our website - we hope to welcome you to one or more of them! 

A successful start and preparations for National Mills Weekend

We had a great opening weekend, helped by the glorious weather; over 300 people visited the Mill and museum over Easter Sunday and Monday. Now we're straight into preparations for National Mills Weekend on the 11th and 12th of May, which should be a brilliant opportunity to showcase the mill with free entry, musical entertainment and the usual stalls and tea room. Last year we had a very special event and attracted 628 people, and next year will be the 200th anniversary of the mill, so we've got a lot to celebrate over the weekend. Hope to see you there!

One month to go!

We're starting to get really excited about our opening weekend on the 21st and 22nd of April now, and we're showing that excitement by...erm... tidying up! Both the entrance kiosk and the tea room have had a morning's work from our team of enthusiastic volunteers and both are now ready to welcome visitors. We've started to sell season tickets and the events programme will be ready soon. Look out for more next month, and put us in your diary for a Sunday or Thursday this season!

February News - Burwell Museum needs you!

Could you be part of our team? 

We're gearing up for the start of our season on the 21st of April, and a big part of that is recruitment for our new Sunday museum assistant. The job ad is below - email education@burwellmuseum.org.uk if you want more information! Otherwise this month has been one of getting things organised, and taking advantage of the slowly improving weather to get some painting done. We hope to have a tidy, freshly painted museum to show off in the summer season!
Best wishes,
Alison
Burwell Museum and Windmill are looking for a: 

Temporary Museum Assistant
Contract: 21 April - 26 October 2019
Hours of work: Sundays - 10:30-17:30 (early finish possible on quiet days)
Salary: £9 per hour

About us:
Set among beautifully preserved historic farming buildings, Burwell Museum tells the story of a bustling fen-edge village. Alongside the 19th-century mill, displays from the everyday to the amazing vividly recreate Burwell life through the ages.

About you:
We are looking for an enthusiastic, responsible and personable museum assistant to join our small friendly team.



You must be capable of taking responsibility for the museum and other volunteers.



This role would be ideally suited to someone looking to gain some customer services/museum experience.



You must be prepared to undertake a DBS (criminal record) check, and either possess or be willing to undertake first aid certification.



Most importantly you will need to have a genuine enthusiasm for the museum and its collections.

The role:
In this role you would act as duty manager on a Sunday, to include:
- Opening the museum (involves some heavy lifting - training provided)
- Dealing with visitors and other ‘front-of-house’ duties
- Event Management
- Volunteer Management

For a full job description, further details and an application form, please contact Alison Giles, Museum Manager on education@burwellmuseum.org.uk

Application deadline noon on Wednesday 13^th March; interviews planned for Sunday 24^th March

Merry Christmas from Burwell Museum and Windmill!

Not much else to say at this time of year, really - I'm spending this month tidying the filing cabinet, which wouldn't make for thrilling reading...
Best wishes, and thank you for your support in 2018,
Alison

End of year report

We've had a great year, and to celebrate we've put together a report of what we've been up to and what we plan to do next. Comments and questions welcome!
Alison

In 2018…

We had at least 3715 visitors  (up from 3573 last year and 3371 in 2016). We collected 380 evaluation forms and they showed that 84% of visitors would be very likely to recommend us to others. Many also specifically mentioned helpful, knowledgeable and/or friendly volunteers.

Volunteer work

4,184 hours logged so far this year – many thanks for signing in and out! Work done in 2018 has included:

Mill maintenance including fitting new stones and tun

Site maintenance including painting ploughs and doors, general maintenance of lawns

Vintage vehicles work on Holsman and Austin, redisplay of smaller items

Dorothy Grainger exhibition

Photo digitisation and revamp of newspaper cuttings

Checking light and pest levels

Cleaning

Front of house – tea room, kiosk and windmill

School and group visits

Events

Opening weekend and Easter Egg Hunt:      327 visitors  

National Mills Weekend:                                628 visitors 

Classsic Car day                                                88 visitors     

Summer Fete                                                   70 visitors (estimate) 

Children’s holiday activities                          384 visitors + October

Tea and talks                                                    85 visitors

Heritage Open Days                                        271 visitors

Funded projects

Tea room refurbishment and card reader system – Cambridgeshire County Council £500

Mill for All Seasons – Heritage Lottery Fund £7000 this year

Evaluation – SHARE museums East £500

Co-op fund for new paths – amount to be decided, collecting in November

Parish Council support for Heritage Open Days £200

Plans for the winter

Vintage Vehicles project – costumes for mannekins and Austen 7

Make all exhibits which contain asbestos safe for the public and for volunteers

Arts award project with Burwell Village College

Classes on Thursdays for Newmarket U3A  (starting in January, French conversation and crafts)

Linda research on the history of the museum

Tidy up including sheds, workshop and builders store

Possible aims for the next three years (covered by the forward plan which we will be writing over the winter)

Make the museum easier to maintain

Make the museum easier to run on open days

Create closer links with the school and other community groups

Continue to record, protect and improve our collections

Generate enough income to keep the museum running without regular grant funding

What else do you think should be here? What would you like to know? Where would you like the museum to be in 3 years’ time?

Tea and Talks programme for the Autumn

Now that the summer holidays have finished and the rain (which mysteriously always seems to prefer Thursdays when we're running children's activities) has stopped again, I can attempt to follow my original plan of updating people on our news at the start of each month. At the moment I'm really excited about our Tea and Talks programme, which has some great speakers (and free biscuits, once you've paid to get in):

Once we've finished those and heritage open days (see the last blog post), we just have October half term and the volunteers' tea party and end of season meeting to go. Many thanks to everyone who has supported us so far, and we hope to see you at something before the end of the season!

Heritage Open Days 15 and 16 September

We're putting the finishing touches to our plans for Heritage Open Days on the 15th and 16th of September (well, that's my excuse for having spent large amounts of time this morning researching local cheese...). We're offering free entry to the museum and mill for the whole weekend, opening as usual from 11am to 5pm with last entry at 4pm. We've persuaded 5 of our volunteers to give talks on their areas of expertise, so the programme looks like this each day:

12pm Paul Hawes     The history of the museum
1pm   Hazel Crane     Dorothy Grainger, local photographer
2pm   Frank Czucha   Memories of Burwell
3pm   Jim Neale         Burwell buses or the Burwell archive
4pm   Steve Crane      Railways in Burwell

We'll also have our storyteller on Sunday, craft activities and hopefully lots of homemade cakes to sell. Heritage Open Days is a really good event to be part of, and I'm really pleased that our exhibition on local photographer Dorothy Grainger fits in so well with their "extraordinary women" theme. We're looking forward to a great weekend!

Activities for the Great British Summer

Just as the school summer holidays start, I'm sitting in the museum office wearing my coat and watching precisely no visitors wander round a wet, windswept museum... However, that gives me lots of time to let people know about our summer holiday "Museum Explorers" activities, which happen every Thursday in the holidays from 1.30 to 3.30:

Thursday 2 August

Meet the Romans

Did you know that there were Romans in Burwell? Explore what their lives might have been like, test your archaeology skills on real Roman pottery and design your own pot.

 

 

Thursday 9 August

The Farming Year

Explore the Barn to find out more about how people would have lived and worked in Burwell when it was mostly a farming community. Dress up, handle our mystery objects and design your own farm.

 

Thursday 16 August

Burwell at War

Find out how Burwell was affected by the First and Second World Wars in the Nissen Hut and Anderson shelter. Handle objects from both conflicts and create your own medal.

 

Thursday 23 August

Burwell Life

Visit the upper gallery to find out more about school, shopping and everyday life in Burwell. Try out a new career as a telephonist, shopkeeper or teacher and learn to make a rag rug.

 

Thursday 30 August

Meet the Mill

Finish the holidays with a visit to the windmill – are you tall enough (at least 1.1m) to climb all the ladders to the top? Don’t worry if not, as there is plenty to do on the ground floor!

Mill for All Seasons project - final review

We're busy finishing off the Mill for All Seasons project, so here is the summary of everything that happened during the project - well done and thank you to all the fantastic volunteers who helped to make the project such a success!

Mill for All Seasons Project progress

June 2017

·         Local groups contacted about outreach, school visits and community exhibition

·         Advertising in place for new volunteers

·         1 new windmill volunteer recruited

 July 2017

·         Outreach sessions: Carers group, Scouts and Beavers, Swavesey WI

·         Press release sent out and interview with Radio Cambridgeshire

 

August 2017

·         Carers’ drop in session at the museum

·         Day centre outreach talk

·         Windmill box created for use in handling talks and with special school pupils

 

September 2017

·         Mill workshop for volunteers

·         Visit from Burwell Early Learners

·         Talks for public at Fen Edge Harvest Fair event

·         Top millstone removed in preparation for being replaced

 

 

October 2017

·         Burwell brownies outreach and craft session

 

·         CPD session with teachers from Burwell Village College

·         U3A group visit

 

November 2017

·         Tractor refurbished and ready to run

·         Two volunteers to a workshop at the National Mills Archive

 

·         Engage outreach group at library

·         Colourbox nursery visit

·         Burwell village college visit

·         Millwright dressing bedstone

 

·         Sensory box session with Castle School

December 2017

·         A5 Learning pack prepared and printed

 

·         Talk to Soham Library Engage group

 

              January 2018

·         Talk to Top Time group at Newmarket Library 11 Jan

·         First new Millstone arrives

            

February 2018

·         First draft of exhibition written

·         Visit from Great Wilbraham School 9 Feb

·         Visit from Castle School 19 Feb

 

March 2018

·         Interim report written

·         Talk at Mildenhall Library 8 Mar

·         Talk at Ely Library 13 Mar

·         Visit from Stretham Primary School 15 Mar

·         Ely local history festival

 

·         Exhibition opens at Burwell at Large

·         Exhibition to Burwell Library

 

April 2018

·         Exhibition in Newmarket Library

·         2 new windmill volunteers recruited

·         History Society talk 18 April

 

·         Visit from Castle School 23 April

 

·         Visit from Mepal and Witcham School 27 April

 

May 2018

·         Stall at Reach Fair

 

·         Talk to Burwell Day Centre

                   

·         Community open weekend 12-13 May attracting 628 visitors, many of them for the first time. Exhibition on display at museum

·         Second new millstone arrives 16 May

 

·         Visit from Morley Memorial School 23 May

·         Visit from Cambridge Home Educating Families 24 May

·         Visit from Burwell Guides 24 May

 

June 2018

·         Visit from Stetchworth WI 5 June

·         Burwell Festival late opening 14 June

·         Visit from Castle School 15 June

·         Visit from Newmarket Shine a Light group 18 June

·         Visits from Burwell Village College 27 and 29 June

·         Visit from Burwell House 28 June

·         Evaluation analysed and next steps identified

 

National mills weekend success and new millstones

We had a fantastic weekend for National Mills weekend, with 628 visitors helping us to smash our original (challenging!) target of 500. We collected stamps from visitors on a picture of the mill to show how many people had been and by the end we had to put them all around the edge! Over 20 volunteers helped to make the weekend happen and we're really grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund for making the event and the project possible.

 

The project is coming to an end now, so we're working on evaluation and the last few school and community groups. Work on the mill continues and we have just welcomed the second of our two new millstones, so watch this space for more information as we repair the tun, work on the brake wheel and the great spur wheel and then turn to the challenge of restoring our external drive.