The Open Days

The first of the three Rifles and Spades Open Days at the Museum took place on Saturday 7th June to coincide with the Leominster Festival. Between 10am and 4pm, 75 people visited the Museum, and looked at our new exhibition. containing both documents and objects about the First World War from the Museum’s collection.. Many visitors were from the town, but there were many from elsewhere as well. Several were in search of information about family ancestors and were delighted to find out more about ‘their’ soldiers. Over sixty photographs of First World War Leominster soldiers and their families were showing on a rolling slide show. 

The second Open Day took place on the same weekend as ‘Children of the Stream and the Field’ in the Priory, and the first of the three free talks at Grange Court; and the third open day was held on the day the Museum closed for the winter.   There were 57 visitors during the day. The new curator of the Herefordshire Regimental Museum called in, and gave us a lot of  information about the soldiers on our rolling slide show, just by looking at their uniforms with a knowledgeable eye.

The Talks

The first of the three free talks associated with the project was given by Kate Jarman, now Chief Archivist at Barts & The London Hospitals NHS Trust and previously at The National Archives, who provided the audience with a lot of really useful detailed information about what categories of military and other records can be used to trace family ancestors who fought in the First World War or were involved in other activities at home in that period.

The second talk was given by Catherine Beale on November 11th. Its title was ‘The Supreme Sacrifice – a hymn in time of war’.  During the First World War ‘O Valiant Hearts’, written and composed by Sir John Arkwright in Herefordshire, became the nation’s favourite hymn of remembrance.  In this illustrated talk, Catherine Beale told the fascinating stories behind the words and the tune.

The third talk, also by Catherine Beale, was given in January on the roles that different members of the Arkwright family played in  the Great War.

Publications

As part of the Rifles and Spades project, the Museum was able to produce an education pack which is available FREE to schools.  More more details see the Schools page.

The Museum’s First World War collection includes several copies of a commemorative booklet Leominster and District in the Great War, originally published by the Leominster Printing Press in 1919. With funding separate from the Rifles & Spades project as such, this booklet was reprinted by the Museum in conjunction with Leominster History Study Group. Copies are available from the Museum when open, for £5.00 (plus P&P if ordered by post); the price includes a small explanatory booklet which also contains an index of the names of soldiers commemorated in the original.

ECHO Group Visit the Exhibition

On 22nd October 2014, a group from ECHO visited the Rifles and Spades exhibition in the Library, and thoroughly enjoyed looking at all the objects and photographs. The following week, a handling session was organised for them, where they passed round medals and other items and browsed the pages on this website!

Kingsland Primary School – Outreach Visit – 9th December 2014

A project outreach visit was made to the Year Five and Six class at Kingsland Primary School. The children looked carefully at a variety of First World War objects from the Museum, deciding what they were, what they were made of, what their function had been, and why they had been carefully saved for 100 years before being given to the Museum for safe keeping. Some of the objects were easier to work out than others; there were some really interesting and sensible suggestions, showing that everyone had thought hard and shared their ideas.