Once again, we were offered an amazing company experience day with The Sandwich Guildhall Museum. Students got a guided tour of the museum by Hank, a very passionate and knowledgeable volunteer. He provided us with insightful, animated and detailed descriptions of the history of Sandwich, all the exhibits and the guildhall itself! He was an excellent tour guide.
We then went with Millie, the museum supervisor, to have a short talk on how the museum operates and how they categorise and log the artefacts followed by a Q&A session on working in a museum and onto a similar task to last year.
Our main task was going through and using the knowledge of how the artefacts were categorised and categorising several different. We were given a few boxes of letters, posters and correspondences between Sandwich officials and the government in the late 1800’s. This year we had correspondences from the early 1900’s mixed in with World War I and II artefacts. We categorised these using the museum’s categorisation system and saw some really interesting memorabilia from war time up to the 1990s.
If you are interested in history or museum conservation at all, this is a fantastic opportunity to check out! The students had a fantastic time and we got a great insight into what is involved in museum curation and conservation. This is something I would highly recommend going to. I would also recommend visiting Sandwich Guildhall too – it’s free and you will have a great time. Check it out here: https://www.sandwichguildhallmuseum.co.uk/
