Battleaxe was going to write about politics – she enjoys a good rant from time to time, but everything keeps changing from day to day. One minute I planned to write about the Greens, the Labour Party and our dreadful media, next thing we have all-out war in the Middle East, because of the ill-thought out whims of that senile old maniac, Trump, and his evil chum Netanyahu. So, politics will have to wait. Whatever you may think of Starmer, you’ve got to pity the poor sod. No sooner does he face one crisis before another, even worse, appears. I’d like to see how any of his rivals in the Labour Party, let alone the current leaders of any of the other parties, would cope in his place… So, phew, off I went to the Museum with the WI instead.
Battleaxe has written about the Museum loads of times – Philosopher and I really like it, but it does suffer from being tucked away from the town centre up Bohemia Road. It desperately needs a cafe as well, but the building clearly clearly lacks space.
This was an organised group tour with Wonky WI, based in St Leonard’s – very well attended. We started in the Durbar Hall with coffee and biscuits, M & S biscuits no less. and the event included an Object Handling session as well as the tour. Above you can see a member of the Museum staff, whose name unfortunately escapes me, showing some of us a coolie hat – I think he said it came from Lady Brassey’s collection, which is housed on the upper floor of the Durbar Hall.
I know Hastings Battleaxe has written loads of posts about Hastings Museum and the Brasseys, but I can be damned if I can find them in the steadily increasing Battleaxe archive. Here’s an incredibly old one from 2013!. Ah well, go to the Museum website and read about the Brassey Collection here…
Briefly, Anna Brassey, wife of Thomas, Earl Brassey, travelled all round the world with him on their yacht, the ‘Sunbeam’. She must have been a formidable woman. Despite suffering from chronic bronchitis and sea-sickness, she was a photographer and a writer as well as a collector. Eventually poor Annie died of malaria on board the yacht and was buried at sea. The Brasseys should be well-known to all Hastings folks – our Library, the Brassey Institute, is also named after them.
Here’s something different for Battleaxe to post – this is the figurehead from the ‘Sunbeam’ in the Royal Maritime Museum, Greenwich. The child is the Brassey’s eldest daughter Constance, who died of scarlet fever aged four. Sunbeam was her nickname.
After our handling session we were given a tour of the Museum by Alice Roberts-Pratt, the Head of Collections. What a great job to have… here she is!
Interestingly, Hastings Museum has one of the largest collections of Native American/First Nation artefacts in the UK – mostly due to some energetic local collectors. Alice was telling us about the current controversies about returning such items to their original owners. I remember finding a so-called Indian Reservation on a trip to Canada back in the 90s. It was a great disappointment to me – like an up-market modern housing development with guys washing their big cars and mowing their immaculate lawns. I can’t see many of them wanting great big dusty feather headdresses and buckskin tunics… maybe they’d like these little things…
Anyway, I would urge anyone who is not familiar with the Museum to spend some time there – the collections are fascinating and they have some wonderful art.
This is going to be a fairly short post. I need to do it before turning the Battleaxe attention to the Hastings Piano Competition, which is in full swing now… I’ll finish with some contrasting weather, and an article about ‘Death is a Desirable Property’, which has just appeared in the East Sussex WI News. Remember when I used to edit that? What a job…
