SEASIDE SPECIAL
Tim Knight, from Scarborough Museums Trust, on an ice-cream tricycle cart. It is one of the items visitors can see at a new exhibition – Our Seaside Town – which opens at Scarborough Art Gallery on May 18.
A RECREATION of a 1950s museum diorama evokes both the sound of the nesting birds of Bempton Cliffs, but also their very distinctive smell.
The quirky piece, including synthesised bird guano, is one of 31 items selected for a seaside exhibition opening at Scarborough Art Gallery on May 18.
Chosen by Bill Thomas, the diorama recreates one that was a feature of the museum for decades and includes a recording of the thousands of birds that flock to the cliffs to breed every year. Another exhibit bound to stir memories is the DePlacido’s ice cream cart which used to operate on South Bay. A modified 1920s bike, with a box on the back, is, according to Simon Hedges, Head of Curation, Exhibitions and Collections at Scarborough Museums Trust, “a 1950s variant of the original ‘Stop Me and Buy One’ Penny Licks”.
A penny lick was a small glass used by street vendors for serving ice cream for one or two pennies, which would be licked clean by the customer.
The unhygienic practice was replaced later by paper cups. Other objects include the town’s Pancake Bell, rung to signal the start of the unique tradition of skipping on the seafront on Shrove Tuesday, and other seaside ephemera, paintings, vintage photographs and postcards.
Mr Hedges said: “Scarborough: Our Seaside Town is about immersing yourself in a memory, not just the object or image but the sounds and the smells – a trigger to a different time and place.”
He said the smell of the diorama encapsulated puffin and gannet guano, with a bit of seaweed, adding: “It’s in a box, it’s really unpleasant. If you’ve ever been there it will take you straight back – it is that direct link to the subconscious system.”
Not just the object or image but the sounds and the smells. Head of Curation, Exhibitions and Collections Simon Hedges on the exhibition.