This week’s blog comes from Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse: Museum of Norfolk Life.  Megan Dennis, the curator, enlightens us on a Gressenhall object housed at the Norfolk Collections Centre and the detective work required to find out its history.

Today I have been working in the Norfolk Collections Centre – trying to find out “what’s in the box”? This large green wooden box was discovered during the Shine A Light project, sitting on the social history racking. Unnumbered and unidentified it was feeling pretty unloved.

Fortunately there were several clues to unravel the story of this object. The box, to some extent, “does what it says on the tin”.

There are a number of large white plastic letters screwed onto the box reading “JOHN H BUSH, THE WOODGATE HERD, OF, PEDIGREE LARGE BLACK PIGS”.

Large black pigs are a traditional East Anglian breed. We have some here on the farm…

Butterfly Canaries in the Earth Ecosystem Coalmine

Two-tailed Swallowtail

Guest post by Leslie Olsen

Predicting the effects of climate change and other human impacts on Earth ecosystems is a critical goal for policy makers, scientists, and environmentalists. Some effects, such as weather extremes and biodiversity decline are becoming clear to everyone. One group of species, the butterflies, is especially sensitive to environmental change, and scientists are using the group to gauge the effects of the changes on other species.

Like canaries in a coalmine, butterflies can serve as valuable indicators of significant changes. Butterflies are easy to see. Moreover, their metabolism and short life span make their numbers an especially sensitive gauge of environmental changes. When a butterfly population falls, other species may follow. Fluctuations in temperature patterns, temperature extremes, droughts, floods, and severe storms affect butterfly populations throughout North America. Studies on the impact of climate changes on insects…

Adventure playgrounds were a feature of childhood/adolescence which passed me by really. I wasn’t brought up in London and they were mostly I think a phenomenon of urban life. I saw plenty of them when I first came to London in 1973 – brightly painted constructions of wood, behind fences, teeming with kids and I had the vague sense of having missed out on something. If you come from a small town, urban life, even the life in what might be called “deprived” areas looks exciting.

So when my colleague Tim showed me a packet of photos of the Notting Hill Adventure Playground in Telford Road that he’d retrieved in the course of an enquiry, I was fascinated by these scenes of communal play. The blogging cells in my brain immediately recognised them assomething you had to see.

Most of these pictures come from a large packet of photographs donated…

Well, it won!  The recently-new second edition of Playing and Learning Outdoors, as described in my earlier post when it was short-listed, has been selected as the winner of the Staff Resources category of this year’s Nursery World awards.  I wasn’t able to attend the Gala Dinner event at the end of September, but the shiny trophy and framed certificate are proudly waiting on my mantelpiece for my children to see when they are home next.  I think this is the first actual trophy I’ve ever won (my son has more than 20 from his childhood football career!).  I’m very chuffed to have this recognition for the book, and grateful for all the ongoing positive feedback I get about how it has helped both students on courses and practitioners who are thinking about their provision outdoors.

Thanks in particular to Julie Mountain (of Play, Learning, Life) and Juliet…

You are a refined and well-mannered lady quietly sewing by the fireside contemplating the latest family scandal, but you find your face is turning a rather un-dignified shade of pink because of the heat of the fire. So what do you need? A fire screen of course!

We have many fire screens within Norfolk Museums Service and several excellent examples live at the Norfolk Museums Collection Centre. These objects are the quintessential showcase piece for domestic history. They are beautiful objects and it’s not hard to imagine the gentle lady of the house reclining in front of the fire with the screen to protect her delicate skin.

These objects are at once practical and decorative. They range from simple wicker screens to sumptuous embroidered spectacles. They sit proudly but quietly in every country house. So when you watch Downton Abbey next week take a moment to observe the surroundings of…

In last week’s post, we left Balfron Tower just as its first residents were moving in, among them the Tower’s architect, Ernő Goldfinger, and his wife, Ursula.  That affluent couple moved out after a couple of months.  It’s a cruel irony that Balfron Tower, conceived in the twentieth century as decent housing for ordinary people, will in the twenty-first become the preserve solely of the most wealthy.  How did it come to this?

Balfron and the Brownfield Estate

Back in 1968, the champagne parties thrown by the Goldfingers for their neighbours made it easy for some to condemn their stay as a piece of show-boating by a wealthy couple who would soon return to Hampstead but Goldfinger was serious in his intention to discover the strengths and weaknesses of his design.  This is clear in his own account and in the careful notes drawn up by Ursula – even if…