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News of Taunton Castle and The Somerset Heritage Centre
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With a rude jolt or two in recent days I realised how much the 'little world' of SANHS was changing in the space of not much more than one year, and how easy it has been to cause offence and disappointment to loyal members in this. So this page is as much for keeping our membership informed as it is for explaining to the public how we are trying to achieve our aims more effectively in future years. Such huge funds are going into this array of undertakings - formed round the vulnerable assets of SANHS. Building work is marching ahead, but only after years of preparation, and perhaps we as trustees have been too absorbed with the whole vexing and complex process and have not communicated well to the membership.
SANHS raised a fund by subscription and shouldered the task of rescuing this formidable set or buildings so central to the historic life of the town in 1874. The Society's collections have been exhibited there in some form ever since.
Until 1958 SANHS managed its own museum there, but with the increasingly hard battles with the ancient dilapidating structure, Somerset County Council accepted the mantle. But they too have struggled with a limited budget to keep the buildings and artefacts up to the modern standards of a great museum for the public today. So the whole complex has been closed now for a thorough refit.
When first, earlier this year, fixtures and fittings were cleared, the buildings were sad and damp, and nostalgic echoes in the rooms emphasized how unfit they had become for modern public life. They were not just ancient and historic (which they will remain) but seedy with the remnants of the 50s revamp which looked so spruce in the photographs of the time. Then soon after, the whole castle has suddenly become full of holes and trenches, and shrouded in scaffolding, and it seems quite damaged until one perceives the teams of hi-vis jackets and hard-hats giving the site an atmosphere suggesting construction hospital treatment. A few months more and we can look forward to the operating gowns coming off - scaffolding and security fencing taken away to show us the Castle's walls again, refreshed and ready to go.
This work has been tackled by professionals and so it should be, designers and architects working with Tom, Carrie, Chris and all the museum staff on this very major £8m project. Trustees have been consulted on matters large and small, maybe not as much as they would have preferred, but have helped, offered advice and worried over so many things. Members have been invited to do this too but probably not often enough either.
Gallery of photographs of progress at Taunton Castle AutumnWinter 2009
Adam Library Bookshelves:
In particular we have agonised over the removal of the bookshelves from the
Adam Library fitted in the 1900s by the Society, but deemed not to be suitable
for the next stage of the life of this room. We agreed that the work of Benjamin
Hammett a further 100 years earlier would shine in its own right in that room,
and the trustees agreed to find a new home for the shelves, which indeed with
great good fortune we have in the Rifles library archive near the former Jellallabad
barracks. Here they look perfectly made for the purpose, and their sale will
pay for new furnishings for the Society.
St Mary Redcliffe Vicarage Staircase:
Another agony was undergone over the 1701, inlaid, oak staircase of the Great
Hall, also deemed impractical to reconcile with the new exhibition spaces.
The stairs were originally saved from the demolished Vicarage of St Mary Redcliffe,
Bristol and given to SANHS in the 1950s by the Sturdy family. The trustees
finally agreed with great reluctance and sadness to support its removal and
to find a new home for this too. At first it seemed impossible to find anything
suitable, as we had hoped to find a public room somewhere, equivalent to the
Great Hall. Eventually we decided that the only remaining option in the due
process of 'deacquisition' was to offer it for sale. The Editor of Country
Life smiled on us earlier this month and printed our article to which we have
had many replies. The breaking news is that we may well be able to sell the
stairs to a new private owner who will cherish it and enable us to put a very
significant fund back into the museum collection.
The new Museum of Somerset will be open through almost the whole of Taunton Castle, more than twice the size of the museum we last saw there, and much more diverse in its composition and setting. On January 30th, Tom Mayberry and Chris Webster will talk us through the work and the new museum, to make up in part for the difficulties of letting us in to see the site with all its physical dangers, but to inform us, in advance, of the delights in store on opening day nearly another year's work later, and how they came about.
It is astonishing - on standing back - to realise that this small team is organising another simultaneous £8m project. At Langley Mead, Norton Fitzwarren two vast (yet still too small) purpose-built structures have emerged, one a reserve collection store and conservation building and the other a combined Record Office and Library.
The SANHS library will be there and it is expected that members will continue to be able to borrow books as they have done before. Volunteers have already come forward to take on the belated job of cataloguing this huge resource. This is beginning very shortly, and more volunteers will be welcomed, as the electronic record grows and gives the public better access to the books than they have had before.
The Obridge Road Records
Office site will close and probably be sold to offset the new costs, and the
Paul Street Studies Library will close and have other valuable designated
uses.
More has been said about the library elsewhere in the newsletter and the open
meeting for members on September 22nd will further inform us, and give rise
to discussion and comment. But it might be said that opening day in a year's
time of these new buildings will represent a triumph of organisation.
Gallery of photographs of progress at the the Somerset Heritage Centre Sept 09
Still inside the Inner Bailey, this is a building that has been more for accommodation than the rest of the Castle, originally medieval lodgings and later a house. Its current sad use as workshops is soon to end and we hope it will enter a new splendid life with a £1m refit, of which £300k has already been pledged by Viridor. Trustees have supported the very able officers of the Somerset Building Preservation Trust, who have set up funding through the Architectural Heritage Fund for a comprehensive options appraisal, which in turn has now been accomplished. In this there is much architectural and engineering work to be a basis for the final proposals. The sensitive refurbishment will be an education in its own right, with opportunities for skills to be learnt as well as practiced. The Vivat Trust is ready to lease the whole building on completion and offer the ground floor for educational use. This will help us to find funding, for which more applications are being made, but it will be most directed towards the current generation of school leavers that is being hit so hard by the social and economic pressures of our times. It is important that this neither conflicts with nor duplicates the educational facilities for children and older adults that there will be in the museum, and SANHS members are seen as forming a most important part in the ultimate education function of Castle House.
We hope that the Castle Hotel will continue to lease the gardens from the Society, with members also welcome to enjoy them as they can now, and that the Hotel will be able to help the Vivat Trust in managing Castle House.
The Hall was built in
1927, next to the Castle's moat, and donated to the Society by the Wyndham
family for holding talks to enlighten the people of Somerset. And so it has
been, but not used nearly often enough or sufficiently nurtured. Two young
lads offered me advice there today. They thought it was a shame that it was
empty and not in use, for them and, worse still, that with the new gates even
the homeless could not sleep in the doorway. I pointed out that persisting
malodorous puddle, but agreed with them that in such a special place there
needed to be much wider and busier action there.
Trustees have been attending meetings and talks with the town council (Project
Taunton) about how the whole area is being developed, how the Hall fits into
this, and the plans for a new, grand and contemporary walkway to link the
two areas of town that are separated by the Castle and its grounds. This is
planned to rrun directly across the gardens, through the wall in the centre
of the photograph above, between the Castle and the Wyndham Hall which will
automatically make a partially enclosed outside space for the hall. Taunton
Deane has applied for planning permission for this and you can see the plans
on-line. The trustees have been supportive of the idea but are discussing
the detail with Taunton Deane.
A party of trustees have recently met the planning officer there who has encouraged
us to make proposals for the Hall, with new facilities and maybe meeting and
members' rooms as well as the existing theatre. Nigel Pearce, a trustee, is
drawing up some plans. Another £1/4m will need to be found to make this
new home for SANHS, but I hope the lads will like it too when we eventually
arrive, and that the vagrants will no longer see it as their privy. It will
be the first change there since it was built 80 years ago when times were
a little different.
Anthony Bruce
Trustee, 30th August 2009