In connection with Avoncroft Museum, Maggie Doyle will be conducting poetry workshops in schools around the West Midlands. Maggie said, “Worcestershire Stanza is really pleased that Avoncroft Museum has given us this public platform to display our poetry. I am very supportive of their initiative to encourage children to write their own poetry inspired by the Museum. She added, “Children don’t actually realise, that they have already encountered and enjoyed poetry, by singing nursery rhymes or by listening to rap music. They may have enjoyed reading rhyming books such as ‘The Gruffalo’ by Julia Donaldson who incidentally, is the current Children’s Laureate.”

One of the schools participating in Maggie’s workshop is Inkberrow First School in Worcestershire. The school recently visited the Museum to learn all about ‘Brick Making’ and ‘Homes through the Ages’, so they will combine this knowledge to produce their own poems about Avoncroft Museum. “We are very proud that Maggie Doyle has agreed to support us with encouraging schools to produce poetry about the Museum,” commented Tracey Ayre, our Learning and Events Officer.

Maggie will judge the best poems from each school which will then be displayed at the Museum. These poems, along with those from the Poetry Trail, will be published into a booklet to commemorate the Museum’s golden jubilee. Signed copies of the booklet (by Maggie Doyle) will be on sale in the Museum shop in time for those wanting to buy it as a  stocking filler for Christmas. You can follow the poetry trail throughout October up until January 2013.

Preserved as part of the redevelopment of the Barnsley Hall Hospital site into a housing estate, the structure, which is known as an ‘airing court shelter’, had become a target for persistent vandalism.

Recognising the building’s historic value, Avoncroft Museum stepped in and together with assistance from Solihull-based Kier Construction, a rescue plan was set in motion.

Despite residents’ best efforts, the shelter was proving difficult to maintain and its future was hanging in the balance. Avoncroft put forward a rescue plan and thanks to support from Kier Construction and three local charities – the George Cadbury Trust, the RD Turner Trust and the 29th May 1961 Trust – we are now in the process of relocating it piece by piece to Avoncroft.

A key feature of mental institutions, airing courts were areas designed to provide open-air exercise for patients. At Barnsley Hall Hospital they were landscaped grass areas enclosed by railings to ensure the patients didn’t escape and each court contained an octagonal shelter to protect patients from the elements.

The shelter we’re moving was in the airing court for the male epileptic patient. Although a simple structure, it’s important because it tells us a lot about the changing attitudes to hospitals and the treatment of mentally ill patients in the early 20^th century. Unlike their mid-Victorian predecessors, the Edwardians saw fresh air and exercise as beneficial, rather than threatening, to health. There couldn’t have been a greater contrast between the Barnsley Hall Hospital and the types of institutions described by Dickens, but despite being modern, light and airy when it opened in June 1907, it was still a place where people who had treatable disorders such as epilepsy were confined away from their families and society.

In partnership with Kier Construction, Avoncroft is now dismantling the shelter so it can be moved approximately four miles to the Museum’s open-air site at Stoke Heath, Bromsgrove.

The painstaking process requires the careful stripping of the roof tiles, removal of the timber roof structure, dismantling of the internal wooden partitions and bench seating, plus removal of the eight supporting cast iron columns.

Once re-erected, the shelter will provide a resting point for visitors on the way to the top of the bank above the Museum’s ice house, where an observation and orientation point will be established as a further phase of this project.

The original plan had been to re-erect the building immediately but, following advice from regional ecology conservation consultancy Middlemarch Environmental, plans have been delayed to protect the Museum’s colony of great-crested newts which will only emerge from hibernation in the warmer weather.

Whilst the re-erection of the main structural elements of the shelter will be undertaken by Kier Construction, the subsequent painting and restoration will be carried out by volunteers and the Museum needs to raise a further £15,000 to complete the project.

The shelter will be re-erected in time for Easter but complete restoration and opening to the public will be in late summer 2012.

In 2006 the Museum raised funds for the restoration of the windmill sails and some of those funds were to go towards the replacement of the tailpole and wheel. The tailpole is the long pieceof wood coming the back of the windmill to the ground which enables the windmill to be turned into the prevailing winds. However, we found it extremely difficult to find a piece of oak long enough to create a replacement – it needed to be 30 feet! However, this year the right piece of timber was sourced and we were able to complete the long-awaited repairs.

The maintenance work started in April when the tailpole cartwheel was replaced after the previous wheel decayed to the point the windmill could no longer be turned. Andy Cameron, one of our Windmill Volunteers, spent a good deal of time finding the best cartwright who would recreate a wheel within budget and took the original iron rim to Kent to be refitted with the new wheel. Andy then brought the wheel back to the Museum and fitted it to the existing tailpole with the assistance of our maintenance volunteers.

The next stage of repair works began in September when the major difficulties with turning the Buck, the top part of the windmill, were cleared by the replacement of the entire tailpole. The old tailpole was removed and the new timber was sourced and fitted into place by Adam Marriot, our local Millwright. It took 3 volunteers, 2 contractors and a mechanical crane to move the 30 feet long oak timber into place.

On 21^st September the windmill was put into full sail for the first time in 18 months and the internal workings were filmed by the BBC for the BBC One series Coast.

We are now looking for volunteers to be trained to sail the windmill for our growing visitor numbers. Volunteers would learn to demonstrate the milling process and on windy days help sail the windmill and mill flour.  For more information on Volunteering in the Windmill please contact Sue, our Office Manager on 01527 831363 or email officemanager@avoncroft.org.uk.

The next stage in the project is to train all the Windmill volunteers to sail the windmill and have the buildings working during the Museum’s open season. Plus we plan improve the internal workings further to enable the Museum to once again sell our milled flour to the public.

The Museum would like to thank all the volunteers who made this project happen and the RD Turner Trust, I Addison Trust and an anonymous donor for funding the repairs to the Windmill.

Whether you are a complete beginner or more experienced there is a course to suit you. Click here for more information

Before

After

The judging will take place on Wednesday 8th June and our judges are Mrs C  Hickman-Smith, WI County Chairman and Leanne Wightman from Tea Magazine.

Following the judging some of our tea cosies will be travelling round the county in our Cosies for Conservation Exhibition and the others will be sold in our gift shop to raise money for the Museum. So if you have your heart set on one of our cosies please let us know.

Thank you to all our supporters who have donated tea cosies, we are very grateful.

Please note that the blossom flowering times vary between tree varieties, so not all the blossom may be out at the same time.

For more information please call the Museum.

More produce grown at the Museum will be sold in the Tea Room and Shop this year – so if anyone has any plants or seeds they are able to donate to the Museum we would be very grateful.