Museum Walker: November 2011

Visit Date: 15 March 2008

Admission Price: At time of visit, the charges were as follow:
Adult - £6.50
Ages 5-16 - £4.00
Concessions - £5.50

Please check to see whether these charges have since been revised.

Ownership: City of York Council (Ownership), York Museums Trust (Management)

Tel. Number: 01904 687687

Website: http://www.yorkcastlemuseum.org.uk/Page/Index.aspx

Walkthrough: The entrance area connects the two buildings that make up the museum, with the set route first taking visitors through the North Building on the left. The initial stairway leads up to the ‘Period Rooms’ exhibition, which showcases the interiors of a middle class Victorian parlour, an 1850s Moorland cottage, a Jacobean dining room and a Georgian drawing room. Each room is fully furnished with information panels on the outside whilst certain rooms also play in certain sound effects, such as wind blowing outside the Moorland cottage and tabor music playing into the Jacobean room. Between the rooms are standing cabinets acting as display cases for statuettes and decorative artefacts, as well as there being a window which overlooks Kirkgate Street, which visitors come to later on through the route. Past the rooms, there is a final display case beneath a staircase containing a moorland cross before the route continues on up the stairs.

The next exhibition, ‘Spotless’, looks at cleaning and domestic hygiene throughout the ages. Utilising a number of hands-on activities, there are mystery boxes for visitors to feel inside, a vacuum interactive which sucks up various forms of waste and a button-operated quiz by the exhibition exit to recap the themes of the gallery. The museum’s collections are shown through thematic groupings of different household fittings and appliances – such as vacuum cleaners, baths, toilets, toiletries and washboards – and with a further period room as a 1950s living room, with looping sound effects coming from around the radio. The panels are designed to be appealing to children, with some containing hinged flaps to reveal further information, as are the old fashioned water pump and the Ash Midden privy, which displays fake faeces and rat models at the base beneath the transparent cover. The steps at the exit point lead down to the ‘From Cradle to Grave’ gallery, which focused upon the rites of passage during the Victorian era. Dominated by the centrepiece of a Victorian funeral procession, with mannequins depicting a bereaved father and daughter following on behind the carriage, the room has large display cases lining the walls for artefacts and clothing relating to birth, marriage and death. The atmosphere is helped by sound effects of church bells and nursery rhymes being played in. The adjacent gallery features ‘Chinese Reflections’ which looks at Chinese culture and how immigrants from China have contributed to the local community within York. On display are cases containing artefacts such as ceramics and fans, whilst the walls are used to show projected films on the subject, a timeline of Chinese immigration and culture within York, and information panels in both the English and Mandarin languages.

Due to construction work going on to the main route, an alternative route takes visitors down another set of stairs which leads into ‘Kirkgate’, the museum’s famed Victorian street recreation. Before this however, the connecting corridor holds ‘Kirkgate Reflections’, in which residents of York from different professions have a full photograph of themselves on the wall with their own accounts of their life in York written alongside. Kirkgate itself is predominantly L-shaped with a number of shop fronts displaying different areas of the Kirk collection. Certain buildings can be entered into, such as the candlemakers and the adjacent firehouse(!) whilst other shops are sometimes manned by volunteers in Victorian costume. Adding to the atmosphere are the lighting and sound effects which run on a 30 minute loop, with half of the time being swathed in daylight with pre-recorded crowd bustle, and the other half darkening to a night-time scenario which includes a thunderstorm with lightning effects. Moving past the horse and cart in the centre of the street before the Period Rooms window, there are further shop fronts to look into as the route moves back to the entrance building, past vintage coin-operated curiosity machines.

The route proceeds to the top floor of the South Building, via a staircase which passes the site’s cafe. The top floor begins with the ‘Military History gallery’ which concentrates on York’s role during the English Civil War, particularly the Battle of Marston Moor. Whilst the information panels are largely taken up by the aforementioned battle, the gallery displays a great deal of 17th century armour as well as an interactive where visitors use pulleys to discover how heavy that armour is compared to more modern army protection. This transitions into more recent conflict, specifically looking at York’s experience with the Second World War. This ranges from the use of standee images and an interview with a local veteran to the larger display case room, which is full of military uniforms, equipment, and other supplies. The route then moves downstairs.

The middle level is the home of the ‘Children’s gallery’, which was closed at the time of my visit, and the ‘Costume gallery’. This begins with a Regency era room reconstruction, with the fine costumes on display benefitting from the dim lighting being used and a rare mannequin posed at a writing desk by the bed. After further displays of vintage clothing, shoes and jewellery, the route leads round to the stairs again and down to the ground floor. ‘The Cells’ has its subject matter split into two, depending on which side of the staircase the visitors are. To the left, each cell contains the products of local craftsmen and their industries, such as printing, joinery and brush-making. On the other side of the stairs, the original functions of the cells are explored, with panels interpreting the small “condemned cell” as well as a larger cell with a grill of a bed on display.

Highlights:

- Wide-ranging collections.
- Kirkgate.

Lowlights:

- Limited facilities.

Access: The museum is located within two of York’s most prominent historical buildings and opposite Clifford’s Tower, which has a large pay and display car park beside it. There are also bus stops nearby and it is very close to the commercial centre of the city, making it easy to reach for pedestrians. Due to the nature of the interiors, there are no stair lifts or regular lifts for wheelchair users to access the upper floors – the only accessible areas are the prison cells, through an alternate entrance, and Kirkgate street via a ramped walkway. For this reason, wheelchair users and their carers are allowed in free of charge.

Overall Impression: Even if you don’t use the annual ticket for repeat visits over the subsequent year, the admissions price is still a fair deal for the amount there is to see within York Castle Museum. Sadly, the preserved nature of the building means that it isn’t fully accessible and the route around the site can be confusing, even though this was partially due to refurbishment work. That being said, Kirkgate alone could be considered an attraction in its own right, despite the fact that there are many other more traditional displays that are very impressive and reflects the sheer size of the museum’s collection.

Update: 29th October 2011 – Following a fair bit of re-design, both buildings have seen significant changes. The North Building has a longer route down to Kirkgate after the Chinese Reflections gallery. Moving up the stairs, there is the first of two studios where members of staff put on demonstrations for visitors and allow them to handle certain objects. Keeping on the domestic theme, the first of these is the ‘Kitchen Studio’ in which a modern kitchen installation is surrounded by craft tables where visitors can drop in for family activities. This is followed by a number of older kitchen environments from the 1940s and 1980s, in addition to hearths from Yorkshire farmhouses and an old-fashioned ice cabinet and a 1930s refrigerator opposite the stairs. The next level down starts with the Dales Kitchen – a room that visitors cross through with some furniture along the walls and objects displayed in an adjacent, locked-off room – before reaching the ‘Barn gallery’. This area has old agricultural tools, equipment and miscellaneous artefacts, such as the mounted head of “Pat the Giant”, displayed on either side of the central walkway. The majority of artefacts have numbered labels with associated keys on standing panel and there’s also a projected film about growing up on a Yorkshire farm. Beyond the Barn gallery are more stairs which lead down to the top end of the Kirkgate street.

The South Building still starts the route off on the top floor, but the start point has become a display relating to ‘Merchant Adventurers’, which displays naval weaponry around information panels. Following on from this, there is a corner display containing dummies dressed in Elizabethan armour before leading into the ‘Military Studio’, where visitors are invited to handle weapons and armour from the past. This then leads into the unchanged top floor displays. The floor below has been fully redone however, with the Children’s galley becoming ‘Toy Stories’, in which toys from the early 20th to 21st centuries are grouped together in cases that run at intervals at either side along the length of the main corridor, with adjacent panels with number keys labelling each item. There is still a presence for costumes, with Hollywood-esque dresses and beachwear in their own displays with sound effects playing in, although what used to be the ‘Costume Studio’ has been transformed into the staff-supervised ‘Castle Playroom’ where all the toys and activities are based around medieval fortresses. The ground floor has also been radically overhauled as the route at the bottom of the stairs begins outside in the courtyard, where a certain number of playground activities are available. The door that leads back into the building takes visitors straight into ‘The Sixties’, a stylised street with overhanging coloured perspex shapes that represent symbols of the 1960s. Unlike Kirkgate, the street is filled with displays, from a case containing objects from the decade to a moped on a stand, a shuttle children can climb into, a standing outline of The Beatles from the cover of the album ‘Help!’ and a jukebox, in addition to a screen playing television footage from the time. There are shop fronts along one side, which house information panels and displays whilst the opposite wall features thematic information on illustrated wall panels.

This then leads into ‘York Castle Prison’, in which the prison cells have been cleared of the tradesmen’s products and left bare whilst eight actors in total perform monologues in character as past prisoners (and staff), which are then projected onto the bare walls. Following the claustrophobic cell, which utilises gasping sound effects and intermittent UV lighting to illuminate facts on prisoner suffocation, the route moves past the stairs and into the second set of cells. Here, the cell environments are used to look at the prison’s history more broadly through a room dedicated to petitions – with sample petitions on wooden boards hanging from the walls – another room projecting a computer animation of the site’s history progressing through the ages onto a screen on the floor. The “condemned cell” now looks at prison poetry, with readings being played through a speaker, whilst the adjacent cell charts the historical fate of the characters seen in the initial part of the prison area. The route then rejoins the central building.

Museum Walker

Wednesday 23 November 2011

York Castle Museum

Wednesday 2 November 2011

6 month update!