Museum Events and Activities

See below for events held at the Museum.

For further information, please telephone 01628 796846 or e-mail (museum.collections@rbwm.gov.uk)

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FUTURE EVENTS

• The Big Draw - Saturday 11 October 2008
• Open Day at the Museum Store - Saturday 15 November 2008

PAST EVENTS

• Museum Store Open Day - November 2007
• The Big Draw - October 2007
• 'Vile Victorians' exhibition - 15 - 30 September 2007
• 'Victorian Fair' on Bachelors Acre,  22 September 2007

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Future Events

The Big Draw - Saturday 11 October

Be inspired to re-discover your artistic talents! Drop in to the Firestation Arts Centre, The Old Courthouse,
St. Leonards Road, Windsor, SL4 3BL from 10am - 1.30pm to draw fire-related objects from the museum collection. Draw yourself as a fire officer!
All ages welcome, all materials provided. FREE admission.

Saturday 15 November 'Museum Store Open Day'

Drop in to see behind the scenes at the Museum Store, Tinkers Lane Windsor SL4 4LR between 10am - 4pm. This year's theme is 'Food: Feasts and Famine.' Children are very welcome but must bring an adult! FREE admission. Come and hear short talks, see displays, and enjoy activities with children.

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Past Events

The Museum Store Open Day, November 2007

The annual Open Day attracted nearly 100 visitors to see displays of archaeology in the museum collection including flint tools, spearheads and other objects found locally from the Stone Age to Saxon times. The tooth of a woolly mammoth from earliest times excited much attention, as did a beautifully made Saxon bone comb. There were also archaeology finds from the collection which could be handled, and this was particularly enjoyed by the children.

Free short talks on the museum archaeology collection by local historians: '5,000 years of Treasure',  'The Stunning Stone Age' and 'Wraysbury Revealed' were full to capacity.

There was a display of artefacts arranged in layers of soil in a glass tank, with the oldest eras at the bottom and modern throwaways scattered on top. This showed just how layers of archaeology build up over the centuries. Children had the chance to dress up as Celts, Romans and Saxons, to colour pictures, or to try making a 'stone age' clay thumb pot, which they could take home.

We were pleased to welcome the Mayor, Councillor Leo Walters, and his wife, to the display, who expressed great interest in all that they saw.

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'The Big Draw', October 2007

18 children with their parents went to Windsor Library for our event, which was linked to the display of life in the 1950s then on view. They sketched some of the 1950s toys and plates on show, and enthusiastically drew new designs of their own on paper plates.

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'Vile Victorians' exhibition, 15 – 30 September 2007

This exhibition, staged at the Guildhall as part of the Windsor Festival, was a huge success, attracting nearly 3,000 visitors including some from around the world. Based on the 'Horrible Histories' series of children's books and borrowed from Wycombe Museum with adaptations for Windsor, it presented some of the darker aspects of Victorian life.

But it was by no means gloomy - children loved crawling into the 'chimney' to see what it would have been like to be a chimney sweep, or pulling the long chain of a Victorian loo to 'flush' it and hear a stinky fact about Victorian sewage. There were many very positive comments in the visitors book: "it really brought the Victorian times to life" wrote several enthusiastic visitors.

Special thanks go to the stewards from the Friends of Windsor & Royal Borough Museum and the Windsor & Eton Society.

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'Victorian Fair' on Bachelors Acre, 22 September 2007

The museum stall at the Fair, where all the stallholders dressed in Victorian costume, attracted over 200 visitors. It provided us with a good advertisement for the museum, since many who came were unaware that the borough has a local history collection.

Our Victorian pedlar dolls proved a particular attraction: miniature versions of the modern-day purveyors of trinkets, sweetmeats and other fairings around the Acre.

Children had fun dressing up and everyone enjoyed handling real Victorian objects and learning more about the museum.

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