NEW PROJECTS

Rate books - our joint project

A rate is a levy for local purposes based on an assessment of the yearly value of property. The earliest rate assessments were written into Churchwardens' and Overseers' account books; they usually list the householders' name and the amount payable for their property. From about 1840 printed books were used and these usually list the houses, street by street, the value of the property, the householders' name and the amount assessed.

A run of Rate books can be enormously helpful for researching house history or family history - they give an idea of when someone lived in a parish or when family property changed hands.

The survival of Rate books depends on circumstance and chance - many have been lost as population growth especially in urban areas led to a huge number being produced and many authorities simply destroyed the records rather than find storage space.

We are joining forces with the Family History Centre to transcribe the Museum's collection of Rate books so that enquiries to either institution can be answered more efficiently. This means the deciphering and transferring of the written content from the page onto a computer database. We are looking for volunteers to help with this and full training and support will be given for this interesting and useful activity.

The Sensory Trail

In each gallery you will notice a wooden box with carefully rounded corners and carpeted insides; you can either look down into it through a viewing panel or reach into it from the front through a large hole, covered by a red curtain, to feel the objects within. Underneath there are trays holding specially selected items. These are our sensory trail "touchy-feely" boxes, constructed by local craftsman Julian Bennett with grant-aid from the 106 Fund maintained by West Dorset District Council.

Through stimulation of the senses, we hope to enhance the museum experience of all visitors, while being mindful of our commitment to those with various disabilities. The items in the boxes reflect the galleries in which they are positioned - in Marsden, for example, visitors are very much enjoying the feel of raw silk and silkworm cocoons, (which also rattle when shaken!) and in Gibb there are plaster casts of fossils and a local geology handling tray.

We were fortunate to have input from several disability groups as well as the knowledge of a blind Museum Association member, who is assisting with Braille text.

Congratulations go to the students from the Gryphon School who came up with such inspirational and imaginative ideas as the "olfactory cookbook" (where you can smell recipes from Roman and Medieval times) and the "tactile textile pillow". The Trail is still developing and we would love to hear thoughts from visitors about what they would like to have put in a box.

We are very grateful to Dorset LINk for awarding us £400 towards educational toys designed to stimulate the senses for children using the trail.

Digitalisation of the photographic archive

This is a huge undertaking, ably led by research/support worker Dave Tuffin, to make accessible to the public our photographic archive which contains over 10,000 items. So far financially aided by the 106 Fund and the Digby Memorial Trust, the first phase of scanning and saving images has begun, on brand new computer equipment supplied by our consultant and principal contractor Simon Nash of Banshee Technologies.

Eventually, a touch-screen mounted on a podium in the downstairs Gardner gallery will allow the visitor to browse through categorised groups of photographs and postcards, and, if desired, to choose items that the Museum can arrange to have reproduced at a modest fee.

Archive photograph of The Parade

Accessible Archaeology

Accessible Archaeology in Dorset (AAD) aims to make the significant collections within Dorset County Museum available in a range of accredited museums throughout the county. Sherborne is one of the four partner museums chosen to lead this project in its first phase.

We have received £500 to thus enhance and reinterpret our existing collection, provided through the Museums Association via the Effective Collections funding stream and supplemented by aid from the Dorset County Museum Advisory Service. AAD will also consider wider issues such as archaeology collection care, legal processes and the role of English Heritage in identifying places of archaeological deposition. It will also address Dorset-wide issues pertaining to archaeological collecting and will seek to harmonise practice among Dorset's museums.