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King's Own Royal Regiment Museum Lancaster |
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The King’s Own Royal Regiment Museum Annual Report 1999/2000 April 1999 - March 2000 Regimental Museum Committee
Chairman Colonel J G de Cordova OBE ex officio Major
Tony Farrell (Regimental Secretary) Staff Assistant Curator Peter Donnelly BA AMA Introduction The present year has certainly been a busy year, and one in which the Curator clocked up many thousands of miles on behalf of the Museum and the Regiment. This years report focuses upon many overseas happenings, but at the core of all of the work remains the museum displays, the thousands of visitors and also the hundreds of enquiries received. It was also the year in which we celebrated our 70th Birthday - with a really good party at which the Corps of Drums were the star turn. Despite a summer of gallery closures and then major work on the ceiling we are now pleased to report that the museum is once again fully open and the work on the plaster should ensure the ceiling stays in place well into the next century. Macedonia As the present year opened in April Burma Company Group were operational in Macedonia, as overhead NATO planes overflew and bombed Kosovo and Serbia. It was against this backdrop that Peter Donnelly made a second visit to Macedonia at the end of May. In just under a fortnight Peter was able to run eight battlefield tours to the World War One Doiran Front - for 360 soldiers from the King’s Royal Hussars, Royal Engineers, Irish Guards, and of course Burma Company, King’s Own Royal Border Regiment. The tours were highly successful and were very well received by all who attended. Peter left theatre with the rest of Burma Company, whilst the remainder of KRH Battlegroup deployed into Kosovo just under a fortnight later. The visit to Macedonia required a great deal of hard work but all round it was well worth the effort. Thanks must go to Captain Dave Hall, the Motor Transport Officer of the 1st Battalion, who worked above and beyond the call of duty in assisting the museum and ensuring that Peter could actually get back to Macedonia to run the tours. Sadly, it is the way of the world, that Dave Hall was too busy himself to actually attend any of the tours. South Africa Centenary Visit A series of events were organised to mark the outbreak of the Boer War, and the Regiment, through the Museum, was invited to attend a Parade and Ceremony in Ladysmith. After a great deal of last minute planning a visit was organised with the museum curator and twelve soldiers from the 1st Battalion travelling down to South Africa. The group was based near Spion Kop, Ladysmith, for the first fortnight of the visit. Tours were made to all of the major battlesites of both the 1899-1902 South African War as well as the scene of the 1879 actions at Rorkes Drift and Isandwalna. The visit to South Africa gave the museum and curator a unique opportunity to visit the areas in which the Regiment had served, as well as study museum provision across South Africa. For the record Peter visited over twenty five museums all over South Africa - not all military, but many with some military content. Like museums in the UK lack of funding of museums in South Africa was highlighted as a problem by curators. Education Work The key advance this year was the grant from the Sharing Museum Skills award to Steven Irwin, a school teacher from East Lancashire. The grant allowed Steve to work with the museum to develop a First World War teachers pack. The pack is designed to encourage secondary school use through history, but also through information technology lessons (the use of the internet to search for details), and also consideration to ‘Citizenship’ which from September 2000 will be part of the national curriculum. The pack, which has received much acclaim, was produced at first in print form but with the support of Cumbria and Lancashire Education On Line it has now appeared on their website, so can be used freely by any school across the UK, indeed the world. The pack will be officially launched nationwide in November 2000. The museum is extremely grateful for all of the hard work by Steve Irwin on his secondment. Norman Rowlinson Norman must have now been a volunteer with the museum for over ten years, and he continues to give vital support to our work. Through the year he has continued his work on indexing The Lion and The Rose - the Regimental Magazine. He spends two days per week in the museum, which is indeed a considerable commitment. The Museum and Curator is very grateful for his continued support. Trustee Meetings The Trustees met in Lancaster in November and received reports from both the Curator and the Head of the Museum on various museum matters. This included reports on the work with the 1st Battalion and the tours to South African and Macedonia. Lieutenant Colonel J M Hardy It is with great sadness that we record the death of Lieutenant Colonel Mike Hardy, a long time member of the Museum Committee and great support of the Museum over the years. Colonel Mike’s regular visits to the Museum have certainly been missed by all staff. Enquiries and Research More than ever before with well in excess of one thousand substantial enquires on Regimental History, but mainly focussing on family history. Whilst the majority of the work deals with the First World War, the number of enquiries relating to the Second World War is now increasing. There are of course frequent enquiries regard details of battles, uniform details and some of an extremely technical nature, which require much research and time before they can be answered. Advice was given to Lancaster City Council during the year with regard to the addition of names to the War Memorial. Through accident and oversight a number of names were not originally added, and Peter was able to provide information which resulted in the addition of a further twenty nine names. During the year a small booklet on The King’s Own in Macedonia in the First World War was published as a spin off from the Macedonia Battlefield Tours. Acquisitions The full list of acquisitions is reproduced below. An item to note is the pencil sketch by L Cottermole done for a set of cigarette cards featuring a soldier of the 4th Battalion King’s Own in the First World War. This was exhibition by David Cohen Arts at the National Army Museum and was purchased at £200. We are very grateful for the £100 discount given by David Cohen. The collections are continuing to expand and we are always grateful to all donors. Much support has been received during the year from both the 4th and 1st Battalions in the form of items donated for our contemporary displays.
Meetings Attended Annual Conference of the Army Museums Ogilby Trust, London Museum and Heritage Show, London Northern Regional Military Museums Meeting, Richmond Talks
Gallery Talks on the Jacobites in Lancaster Museum History 1929-1999 Friday 10th December 1999 marked the 70th Anniversary of the opening of the King’s Own Museum by Lord Derby. Celebrations on the day began with a display by the Corps of Drums of the 1st Battalion, before the Mayor of Lancaster, our good friend, Councillor Sybil Rostron cut the birthday cake. Museum Curator, Peter Donnelly, then gave a short talk on the history of the museum. This is produced in shortened form below: The first record of a military museum is in the 1680s when the Royal Armouries first put items on display. One hundred years later obsolete equipment was put on display by the Royal Artillery in 1778 for the benefit of the education of officers and men. In 1831 the Naval and Military Library opened in London, and it was this organisation which was later to become the collection of the Royal United Services Institute. During the First World War thoughts turned to military exhibitions and in 1914 museums around the country were quick to have displays of artefacts sent back from the Western Front. In 1916 there were many proposals to establish local war museums and in 1917 the War Cabinet agreed the plans for the establishment of the Imperial War Museum. By 1919 the idea of local war museums had gone and local authorities thought of cheaper ways of commemorating the war dead through memorials. In 1920 the East Yorkshire Regiment opened a museum, and this got other Regiments, including the King’s Own, planned their own. By 1929 there were 25 Regimental and Corps Museums in the UK. Many were very basic - simply reflecting a military store. Many were run along the lines of the Quartermasters Department - come in and look - don’t touch and don’t ask for anything! These first museums had their origins in the work of the Imperial War Museum and also the travelling exhibitions that they sent around the country. Local civilian museum provision was increasing at this time and this sparked Regiments into action. Finally, there was the requirement to get somewhere suitable to display the items from over-full messes - many of whom had acquired many hundreds which were impractical to keep and transport around the world - where ever a Regiment travelled. In Lancaster it was the work of Mr Bland, the Borough Librarian and Museum Curator, along with Colonels Cowper, Grover and Keith - three worthy Regimental historians - that the museum was set up. An appeal was made for artefacts and money was raised to purchase equipment and cases. The museum opened on 10th December 1929. Colonel Cowper, writing in 1935, laid down three clear objectives: 1. The museum was to be a storehouse of military knowledge for the military historian - who could use archives, histories, objects and photographs in research. 2. The museum could collect together those relics of the past which make history come alive for the recruit. 3. The museum brought the army and its past history to the notice of the general public. Bland and Cowper made one key decision - and this has been crucial for the success of the museum - its location. It was not based in Bowerham Barracks - but in the heart of the town. There was a real pride in the Regiment by the people of the town - and this was noted by Bland in 1929. Between 1929 and 1966 the collections were displayed on the ground floor and then moved to the present location. The collection then underwent a major redisplay which opened in December 1997 - which improved interpretation and also more than doubled the space for the display of collections. In seventy years the museum has had six curators dealing directly with it - Bland, Shearer, Tyson, Watson, Eastwood and Donnelly. Progressively the workload has increased and the museum is now busier than every. The continued support of the City Council is very much vital to the success and the museum is probably unique in the close co-operation between the City and Regimental bodies when it comes to the museum. This reinforced further with the newly created Military Heritage Group in Lancaster. Over the past seventy years the museum has radically developed and the past few years have seen the redisplay, publications like ‘Lions of England’, and now battlefield tours of Macedonia and South Africa with serving soldiers. I don’t think that Colonel Cowper or Mr Bland would have been surprised as to how the museum has developed. I am sure they would be both delighted in what exists today. For the future - the museum is on a very sound footing. We are in a better position than most and with the forthcoming projects like the education work and continued computerisation will see our work with displays, research and enquires develop even further. |
