Reviews
Hertford Museum, Hertfordshire
Penny Ritchie Calder on a revamped
museum that knows how to engage its
audiences and make them feel involved
44 | Museums Journal | August 2010
We have become accustomed to
makeovers on a grand scale. A
museum disappears behind
hoardings and emerges many
millions of pounds later, all too
often revealing the triumph of
style over substance. Hertford
Museum has been the subject of a
more modest 14-month
transformation, reopening its
doors in February this year. While
lacking on the style front, it wins
hands down on substance.
Two local businessmen and
collectors, Robert and William
Andrews, founded the museum
in 1903. Their dream was to create
a free public museum for local
people. Hertford has a long and
interesting history as a royal
borough, market and county
town. It boasts several famous
one-time residents, including the
notorious highwayman, Walter
Clibborn, who scented out his
targets while selling pies in local
pubs, and WE Johns, author of
the popular Biggles books.
Like Johns, the museum has
many good stories to tell, from
present-day Hertford, way back
to prehistoric times. The
Andrews brothers’ intention was
to capture some of these stories,
but they also wanted to give the
townsfolk a glimpse of what
existed in the wider world beyond
the county boundaries.
They had been collecting all
manner of objects since the 1880s
and encouraged others to do so.
Friends and family travelling as
far afield as Japan, Australia and
Africa brought back whatever
they thought might be of interest.
The result is a rich eclectic mix.
Smallest zeppelin victim
The home the brothers found for
their acquisitions was an early
17th-century building on one of
Hertford’s main streets. It has
undergone several structural
changes over the last century and
the latest scheme, funded largely
by the Heritage Lottery Fund,
has involved the redisplay of the
permanent collections and the
refurbishment of the temporary
exhibition gallery. A small multipurpose extension has also
been built, and new lifts provide
wheelchair access to all the
museum’s public areas.
Project data
Cost £1.2m
Main funders Heritage Lottery
Fund £985,000, East Herts Council
£100,000, local donors
Exhibition design RFA Design
Architect Architects
Co-Partnership
Builders Bakers of Danbury
Fitout The Workhaus
Showcases The Workhaus
Mountmaker Colin Lindley
Handsets, including an old
Bakelite telephone, give visitors
an insight into the experiences
and working lives of local people.
The reminiscences are light and
informative, like intriguing
snippets of conversation you
might overhear on a bus.
Children are encouraged rather
than merely tolerated. There are
gallery trails, a dressing-up box
and a play shop complete with
counter and till. Handling objects
set into walls and table-tops
provide good tactile features.
Back on the ground floor the
refurbished temporary exhibition
gallery is small and dominated by
a central full-height showcase.
The first show, Henry Moore’s
etchings and sculptures of sheep
(27 February–5 June), was a good
one. Moore’s nicely observed
pieces filled the space well, and
provided an ovine theme for
several related workshops.
Just outside this gallery is a
touchscreen offering access to a
database of old photographs of
the town and surrounding areas.
They make fascinating viewing
and were generating animated
discussions among several
visitors.
Hertford Museum is truly part
of the community it serves. The
new extension accommodates
school groups, adult learners,
holiday activities and the weekly
Women’s Institute market.
Businesses and organisations in
the town have been roped in to
Adopt an Object, helping to pay
for the conservation of everything
from a woolly mammoth tusk
found nearby to old pub signs.
This redevelopment project has
not broken any new ground.
What matters more is that the
museum has stayed faithful to its
roots as a cultural asset for
Hertford’s people.
Even to a nit-picking visitor, it is
obvious that the museum knows
its audiences. It knows what they
like, and knows how to engage
with them and how to get them to
feel involved. It is refreshing to see
a makeover that enhances rather
than eclipses this special
relationship.
Penny Ritchie Calder is a museum
consultant and writer
Left: the childhood collection.
Below: exterior of the Hertford
Museum. Right: a ring of local
celebrities. Below right: a gallery
showing local flora and fauna
Henry Moore’s sheep
These are minor niggles, and are
more than offset by the gentle
delights that make museums like
this such a pleasure to visit. There
are a huge number of objects to
enjoy, from the sign warning that
anyone swearing on the bowling
green will be fined a halfpenny, to
a local manufacturer’s display
from 1935 showing how the thigh
bone of an ox and some Siberian
bristles come together step-bystep to make a toothbrush.
August 2010 | Museums Journal | 45
photography Courtesy Dave Cory (childhood exhibit); RFA Design (galleries)
The small entrance area opens
straight off the street and
incorporates the reception desk, a
row of computers with internet
access and a well-stocked shop.
First impressions are cluttered
but welcoming. In such an old and
much-adapted building it has
been impossible to make sweeping
architectural statements,
although glazed panels in walls
and doors help to bring in light
and open up the smaller spaces.
Beyond the shop is what might
best be described as a mini-Pitt
Rivers Museum. Here you come
across some of the founders’ prize
items, from samurai armour to a
stuffed platypus. A touchscreen
provides useful background
information and close-up
photographs of the objects. In
lectern showcases, local relics rub
shoulders with ancient artefacts.
Next to a Greek terracotta pig
figurine and mosaic fragments
from Pompeii is perhaps the
smallest victim of the first world
war: the preserved remains of a
slow-worm killed when a zeppelin
was shot down over nearby
Cuffley in 1916.
Upstairs, the focus is on
Hertford’s heritage. The
collections have been divided into
familiar social history categories:
childhood, school, sport, clothes,
working lives, home, wartime,
and so on. With some 60,000
objects to choose from, the
showcases are full to the brim.
Items that did not make it into
the showcases have found their
way onto the ceiling, but the result
is clumsy. An electric fire, a pair of
bellows and a dustpan fight for
space with the lighting system.
The displays also include some
unusual juxtapositions that could
benefit from more interpretation.
In the Home section, an iron-age
cooking pot sits next to a 1950s
washing machine, leaving visitors
to wonder what this might mean.