Society reopens the door on town history
AFTER a 21-month closure, members of Bacup Natural History Society are delighted to be to reopening their museum and welcoming people back in.
Although the museum on Yorkshire Street, Bacup, closed its doors a week before the first national lockdown, volunteers kept in contact over social media.
For the past four months, a small group has been working tirelessly to prepare the building, affectionately known as ‘The Nat’, and make sure it is ready for the reopening on Saturday, December 4.
Visitors are now asked to pre-book free tickets for a specific time so that numbers can be controlled, and that will not be the only change they will notice as they tour the premises.
Historian and general secretary Wendy Lord said: “We have new central heating, new ecolighting, new carpeting and we have opened up the first-floor museum space.
“It had become like a ‘messy attic’ but now it is much more organised and we have a children’s space which we will be able to use in the future and there is a one-way system to tour the exhibits.
Visitors will start by seeing fossils and bones and artefacts from the stone age and bronze age; a lot were found locally and some have been donated from other countries. Many are objects that members of the Nat picked up on their rambles in the early days.”
The once dusty and crowded display cases have been cleaned out and repainted revealing artefacts that have not been seen for years.
Wendy said: “I have been here for 17 years and I have found items while going through the cases that I never knew we had.
“There was a 1920s wedding dress that was just in a bag, so I took it
home, hand-washed it and it is now on display.”
She also found that the Nat had been gifted the former Mayor of Bacup Ada Rhodes’s MBE and mayoral medals, so they now form a display in their own right.
Botany specimens from the Second President of the society Dr Joseph Hardman Worrall are now on show.
Dr Worrall gave the Nat use of a cottage on Rochdale Road when it founded in 1878.
Treasurer Christine Ormrod said: “It has been a magical mystery tour for the volunteers and it has given me the confidence to look and see what else we have in the museum.”
An ‘object of the month’ is being introduced to encourage visitors to share their own stories and experiences and when the museum reopens on December 4 from 10.30am to 3.30pm the first object will be an original miner’s Davy Lamp.
The museum will be open every Saturday to Christmas.
Wendy has also written a large selection of books on the history of Bacup and they are available to buy at the museum.
For tickets visit https:// www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ grand-re-opening-tickets-206655711797 or look at the website www. bacupnaturalhistorysociety.co.uk