Trip into towering past for historian
A Nelson history buff is delving into England’s historic castles, palaces and other sites to help bring our local heritage alive
Jessie Bray Sharpin works at the Nelson Provincial Museum as a collections assistant. The 27-year-old she said had a passion for history since she was a child.
‘‘Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved history ‘cos I always read the Runaway Settlers by Elsie Locke.’’ (a book based on a New Zealand pioneering family).
Now, Sharpin is preparing to go to the Open Palace Programme in July, a $5000 course which visits several historical sites over 20 days.
It includes Bath, Stonehenge, Windsor Castle, Stowe Palace and several London sites, including the Tower of London.
Sharpin said everything she would learn would be ‘‘really useful to bring back to my work here, even though it’s obviously a different world’’.
‘‘We learn from the professionals at each different site ... we might work on bringing visitors into a heritage house or education programme or how to care for an object or textiles so it’s all areas of museum work.’’
Sharing her knowledge of Nelson’s history to fundraise for the course, Sharpin recently finished doing weekly history walks fol- lowing two different routes through the city which she led from the start of the year.
The walks popularity grew from just six people in the first few weeks to around 20.
Sharpin said she aimed to make history ‘‘more accessible’’.
‘‘I like to kind of talk about these people how you’d talk about someone now, and make it more interesting for people.’’
She said she was especially interested in social history, ‘‘everyday lives of people that might have been forgotten or need their stories told.’’
Her next fundraising effort is a presentation called Temperance and Vice that mixes stories of alcohol, breweries and the temperance movement in early Nelson. It covers colourful characters including Alfred Saunders, Isobel Broad and Biddy of the Buller.