Stewart Whillis at Leyland Museum

18th July

In a quite brilliant lecture local clock expert Stewart Whillis fascinated a considerable audience at the museum with the story of William Leigh, one of the master clock makes of English horologists golden age.

Stewart Whillis answering many questions

Amongst his creations was the celebrated Worden Hall clock. Stewart spoke of his own very early involvement with rescuing the clock. He has been responsible for weekly windings ever since, as was recently recognised by a presentation from South Ribble Borough Council. Stewart added, ‘It has been a pleasure to have been custodian of what is a marvelous piece of English workmanship at its very best. William Leigh was decades ahead of his time’.

Museum makes 1000th acqusition to its collection

16th July

In our most successful Archaeology Festival ever, visitors attending Dot Boughton’s fascinating talk about her involvement in the discovery of the Silverdale Hoard were in for a special treat. The Viking treasure, discovered in 2011 is believed to have been one man’s share of the much larger Cuerdale Hoard. 

Coins from the 1840 find are currently on display at the museum kindly on loan from the Harris Museum, Preston. Image P1020348 shows Dot autographing postcards of the Silverdale Hoard. She spoke at some length of her role as Finds Liaison Officer at the British Museum for the NW of England.

In this respect she is responsible for treasure Trove, and presented an inscribed silver ring found by metal-detectionists Iain Gunn and his wife at Mawdesley to the museum. It dates from around 1550 and is of a type known as a Posy Ring.  

Dot examining a small bronze axe

This is the first Treasure Trove the museum has received. It was also the 1000^th donation of items to the South Ribble Museum collection. As curator Dr David Hunt said, ‘We are a tiny volunteer run museum so this is quite a day for us. I don’t think our founders in 1978 could ever quite have envisaged this day coming along!’. But that was not the end of the occasion, because Dot went on to identify a locally found small bronze axe as dating from around 1700bc. That is almost 4000 years old. Dot had the last word, ‘This is really exciting, it is not a rare or valuable find but really is what my job is all about; saving our heritage for the nation’.