Wiltshire forum 25 room
Image by Chance
Wiltshire

Devizes Museum

close
more_vert
Littlestone L
Littlestone Feb 16, 2007 12:30:42
Replying to VenerableBottyBurp

(and Celtic cabinet - wow! wow! wow!), and more Avebury artefacts than Avebury AK museum; you would think it would be supported more by the state as the county and the district council are under such strains to cut budgets.
Saw the Celtic cabinet for the first time only recently - wonderful!

Totally agree with you that Devizes Museum should be supported by the State. By comparison the Chelmsford Museum (entry free) is due for a £3.5 million extension to its present Grade II listed building, with new galleries and an education room. The present Chelmsford Museum is about the same size as Devizes Museum, and although it has some nice pre-Roman and Roman stuff (plus quite a lot of info on the Chelmer Cursus) it has nothing like the variety of artefacts that Devizes has.

Not sure about moving some of the Devizes Museum collection to Stonehenge though VBB. Devizes Museum does have its own history and it would be a shame to lose that. Don't know what the local politics are but it sounds like a campaign to keep the collection where it is and improve the galleries is called for.

V VenerableBottyBurp
VenerableBottyBurp Feb 16, 2007 13:17:33
Replying to Littlestone

I am not being that naughty really, think about this:

Devizes was chosen by the Wilts Arch Soc in 1853 as an HQ not only because it was the centre of the county for travel by horse, but seen to be the centre. Not Swindon, not Salisbury, not the county town of Trowbridge - the centre. Now like cottage hospitals, country pubs, village schools, rural shops, everything is being centralised because people have access to personal modes of travel/phones/internet. This initially was going to work in favour of Devizes - five years ago the county records office was planning to move to Devizes along with the national photo archive, however that went to Bradford and the county RO has moved to Chippenham because of the transport infrastructure. The flip side is that those from the south of the county will start keeping their own archives and historians won't know where everything is and have to travel round to find it. The one thing that the Wilts Arch could do to centralise Wiltshire collections and make them accessible (add the argument her 'how much is Stonehenge worth?') is to relocate to the place where the visitors already go and attempt to democratise the visitor experience.

I might just add that moving to Avebury would not be work as well as people visiting the site already spend all day and have plenty to see and do) whereas at the famous place they average a stay of 20 minutes and get propaganda shoved at them by EH.

VBB