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The latest exhibition at Saffron Walden Museum shows some of the rich variety of objects recently given to the Museum. Their stories are as varied as their owners, sometimes collected from faraway parts of the world. They range from a local bee keeper’s equipment to a bowler hat the belonged to R A Butler, the MP for Saffron Walden from 1929 – 1965; a “poacher’s” or hunting jacket with ample pockets;
a knife fashioned from the steel of British car springs by the feared Mau Mau in Kenya; a demob suit and a 1940’s dress; a clock presented to the Matron of the Saffron Walden Workhouse: the few worldly goods of a Tibetan Buddhist monk sold to pay his way to join the Dalai Lama in exile; local natural history specimens and recent archaeological treasure finds.
Also included is the first ever object presented to the Museum by Mr Henry Archer in 1832 – described as “a small rude Roman urn”. It was found in digging the foundations for the alms-houses in Saffron Walden. This drawing shows the original Register entry with measurements and a photograph of the pot itself.
 
A natural history object in the exhibition is a rare rock, rhomb-porphyry, found locally. It came from Norway and was moved here by glaciers.
These Tibetan monks’ hats are among group of objects that were donated by someone living in India who had come across an old monk fleeing from Tibet carrying all his worldly possessions on his back, glad to exchange them for a bite to eat.
The objects featured in this exhibition are not normally on display but are safely stored away. The museum is simply not large enough to show all the objects in the collections – about 175,000 collected over the last 175 years. Only about 10% is exhibited at any one time, although researchers and anyone interested can always make arrangements to view particular things. Despite the shortage of space the collections are being added to all the time by donation, bequests, and excavations. The house more of our ‘hidden history’, the Museum has put in a Lottery bid to built a new Heritage Quest Centre to make the collections far more accessible to visitors. The result will be known in March 2008 and your support for the Heritage Quest Centre Appeal Fund would be very welcome!
Below:
A dress like this was a bit of a luxury after the Second World War. ( See pic below) It dates to the late l940s and is in a bright jazzy pattern.
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