Erewash Museum is currently undertaking conservation work on the Margaret Hope Robinson letters – an archive of more than 2,000 letters that give an emotional insight into the lives of families of British prisoners of war (POWs) during the Second World War.   In 1944, Margaret Hope Robinson was a 29-year-old deputy registrar at Ilkeston Registry Office and was desperate for news of her husband Paul Maltby Robinson, a Major with the Sherwood Foresters, who had been captured by the Japanese forces a few years earlier.   She broke Whitehall regulations to interview two repatriated former POWs and produced a pamphlet...

With the summer fast approaching, people are taking to the canals once more, either to use the towpaths for various activities, or even hiring a boat and taking a holiday on the canals. And then, of course, you can’t forget the people who live on the canal all year round. Many people see this as the idyllic life style. A house which can go anywhere (as long as there’s a navigable body of water) seems like a good idea, and can be a lot of fun. However, that was far from the case for the people who first lived on the...

So soon after Easter this year, this weekend was another long weekend, the May Day bank holiday. For many of us, it’s just another day off, and a much-welcome break. However most people never ask why we celebrate 1st May. It isn’t a big religious holiday like most of the others, and it doesn’t seem to be a particularly significant date in the modern calendar. However, it was very important in the past. Whilst, these days, we don’t consider summer to start until 21st June, the old first day of summer was May Day.   Because of this, there were many celebrations...

With Easter this weekend, I’ve been looking into the traditions of the Easter Egg and the Easter Bunny. The origins of these are now lost, although it appears that they have been symbols used for festivities around this time of year for thousands of years. In fact, there is an ancient Iranian tradition for decorating eggs to celebrate the Iranian New Year at the Spring Equinox (the day in Spring when there are as many hours of daylight as there are of dark). This is one potential origin for Easter Eggs, coming to the more Christian countries via routes of trade...

So we’ve made it this far, and here we are, once again, at Easter. Easter is a great time for tradition, and many have sprung up over the years. The biggest traditions, however, tend to be food related. When most people think of Easter food, they think of hot cross buns. However, there are plenty of other recipes that people used to make. Here, I intend to provide a couple of them for you to try. Fig Sue This first recipe, Fig Sue, is traditionally consumed on Good Friday. It’s a very easy one to make, requiring only two ingredients. 2...

As our first official task, we were assigned to interview Mark Parry, an artist who has recently done some artwork at the museum. We caught up with Mark to talk about the inspiration behind his window exhibition at the museum. Mark is an artist who works with light, film, digital video and photography both separately and in combination to create an approach which is driven by ideas, context and conveying meaning through evocative and emotive imagery and sound. He does this to discover the right combination of these forms to create a seamless whole. His exhibition at the museum involves colourful...

Everything in a museum tells stories of lives very different but also very similar to our own. This is the first part in a story showing a bit of what those lives were like, and demonstrating how interesting any object from the past can be if you imagine being there. ----- You try to hold back a yawn – unsuccessfully. Miss Sanders turns around, throwing the empty whiteboard marker into the bin as she says, ‘Oh dear. I do hope I’m not boring you.’ The class titters. Everyone likes Miss Sanders, whether she’s peppering sentences with cringy puns in English or...

Hi, my name is Ellie Mitchell and I’ll be writing the occasional blog post for the museum, as well as working with Sarah on a bigger project centred on local women’s history (which is hopefully coming soon). I’m a final year English Literature student at the University of Nottingham and I’m currently writing my final essay on D H Lawrence, which is what brings me to the museum and to an area so full of literary history. Some of the most interesting parts of Lawrence’s writing aren’t actually the sex scenes (contrary to popular opinion), but the incredible social realism and...

The small village of Dale Abbey has, as the name would suggest, originally a religious settlement. There are no records to explain how this history began, and the founding of the Abbey at Dale Abbey are steeped in myth. There is only one manuscript giving a history of the foundation: the Dale Chronicle, written by ‘Thomas de Muscam’ probably in the 13th Century. The only surviving copy of this manuscript is bound into the back of a later document, a Chartulary (or register) of the Abbey from the early 14th Century, now held in the British Museum[1]. The Chronicle charts the...

She enters through the main door, its stained glass windows reflecting the sunlight. Walking through the hallway, she's transported to the 1950's; a sweetshop appears, decorated with brightly coloured wrappers coating the larger chocolate of the past. Her eyes widen as she looks at the candy canes leaning in the tall jars and the round sweets glittering appetizingly. Before she gets even more excited, she reminds herself that they're not real. Only if they were though. Another few steps and she arrives in the Lally Gallery; there is something interactive about this art, it seems to be in 3D. The artists...

Works by the Midlands Textile Forum will be exhibited in the museum’s Lally Gallery until April 18th. I spoke with Harriet Raine about her and the rest of the Forum’s work. Harriet originally had a career in medicine, but has always been interested in making things and in ‘making things happen’. Taught crochet by her great-grandmother, she soon moved on to bobbin lace and more complex forms of textiles. The Midlands Textile Forum, consisting of eleven artists based in the West Midlands, have been brought together by a shared interest in the potential of textiles as an art form. Harriet is...

“It is said that his birth was marked by earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes, firestorms, the explosion of three neighbouring stars and, shortly afterwards, by the issuing of over six and three quarter million writs for damages from all the major landowners in his Galactic sector. However, the only person by whom this is said is Beeblebrox himself” (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams). As an example of how myths can start, this is a reasonably good, if exaggerated, example. And, being about birth, I feel it somehow appropriate for this, the first post in a series based around...

Coal was one of the main reasons Britain’s industries developed quicker than any others’ during the Industrial Revolution. At coal mining’s peak in 1913, this industry consisted of about 2600 mines, producing 287 million tons of coal per year and employing a million people. The history of Erewash and surrounding areas is tied to coal to an extent easy to under-estimate today. Mining communities in the area were tight-knit: many collieries had their own sports teams, and miner’s brass bands were common. The Ilkeston Miner’s Welfare club opened in 1924, standing on the corner of Bristol Road and Manners Road; offering...

Through this museum blog, we always want to showcase different voices and different responses to the museum, our collection, our special events and our community. Everyone is different and the blog would be boring if it was only ever the staff who posted through here. Sometimes, new eyes notice details that we don’t, or a new visitor is interested in an aspect of our history we’d never really considered. As part of this, beginning in March 2017, the museum is hosting four students on placement from the School of English at the University of Nottingham. All of the students will be...

Bennerley Viaduct is an extremely important local historical monument which the local community hold close to their hearts. In 2016 we hosted an exhibition telling the story about its fascinating history and how it relates closely to the historical development of Ilkeston and the Erewash Valley.  This has been very worthwhile and made many more people aware of the great heritage assets they have on their doorstep. Sustrans’ proposal to restore Bennerley Viaduct and make it publically accessible by building ramps and paths up to it and across is very popular in the local community. By bringing the viaduct into use...

We are pleased to announce that we are working with Long Eaton and District 50+ Forum for their “Toton Sidings Remembered” Project The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) have awarded £9,600 to the Forum to work for 18 months with The Erewash Museum and local schools to revive memories of this amazing local heritage, once the largest railway marshalling yard in Europe handling 2 million wagons a year. The project management group includes Pete Wearn and David Farley from the forum, local railway enthusiasts Brian Amos and Phil Burton who some readers will know from their inspiring talks about the yards and Helen Martinez...

The cottages were built around 1779 at Sandiacre Lock on the Erewash Canal. Although each of the 14 locks along the twelve and a half miles length of the Canal had a lock cottage attached, Sandiacre Lock cottages are the only ones that remain today. The cottages at Sandiacre housed the families of the lock and toll house keepers. When the canal first opened Industry along the Erewash Canal was extremely busy and sometimes hectic. The movement of commerce along the canal included coal and iron products as examples and the links with other canals and the River Trent meant goods...

Last month, the museum marked Holocaust Memorial Day. During the week, we shared blogs from our volunteers Susan, Kate and Jessica, all of who felt moved to put their thoughts into writing. In the museum itself, we had a display to mark the day. It presented materials provided by the Holocaust Memorial Trust, to allow our visitors to engage with the history of genocide, to understand the Holocaust and the genocides which have happened since. We also asked them two important questions: How can life go on? And what can we learn from history? In response, staff, volunteers and visitors wrote...

Blog and poem by Jessica Palmer Holocaust Memorial Day is, in my opinion, one of the most important days in the year and it should be treated in the same way as Remembrance Day. HMD isn’t just about the genocide that took place during World War II, it is also about remembering victims of the other genocides that have happened in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. It is about remembering the huge and incredibly unjust loss of life that has taken place and to serve as a reminder that this should never happen again.27th January is the date chosen for HMD...

When my Grandpa was a little boy all his parents’ wanted for him was a safe place for him to grow up and get his education. They were living in Russia and as Jews they had been horribly racially abused and persecuted pogroms. Germany between WW1 and WW2 was being run by a liberal government called Weimar and my Great-Grandparents decided that they would live a better life in this artistic and prosperous country. After Hitler came to power, through manipulating this democracy of Weimar, he stirred up anger against the harsh terms imposed on Germany at the end of WW1...