Recently the Museum of Liverpool has been running special ‘behind the scenes’ tours of the archaeology collections, as part of the Rainford’s Roots project. One visitor shares his experience on one of these visits:
“Two dozen members of the Rainford’s Roots group took the opportunity to visit the Museum of Liverpool’s storage facility located in deepest north Liverpool. Led by Exhibition Curator, Liz Stewart and accompanied by Kerry and Sam, we were taken on an interesting and impressive tour of the stores. We were surprised to learn that the c.700 items on display in the museum constitutes less than one per cent of the total archaeology collection!
“Two dozen members of the Rainford’s Roots group took the opportunity to visit the Museum of Liverpool’s storage facility located in deepest north Liverpool. Led by Exhibition Curator, Liz Stewart and accompanied by Kerry and Sam, we were taken on an interesting and impressive tour of the stores. We were surprised to learn that the c.700 items on display in the museum constitutes less than one per cent of the total archaeology collection!
First was the Land Transport store room where we saw bicycles, bath chairs, carriages from Croxteth Hall and a superb Vulcan Car made in Southport early in the 20th century. Next we climbed the stairs to the Antiquities section which holds artefacts from all over the world. The high point of our visit was on the top floor where the regional archaeology finds included those from Rainford. We were allowed to handle some of the pottery from Rainford, including the flared cups of early post medieval age (i.e. Elizabethan), and an imitation German stoneware cup. Alongside these were similar finds from Prescot including a very large storage jar. There was also more elaborate pottery from Buckley in North Wales with raised slip decoration and sgraffito where the decoration is scratched through the slip revealing the glaze underneath.
Finally we were shown several drawers full of flint implements and were able to hold axes from Mynydd Rhiw on the Lleyn peninsula and a few of the fine collection Neolithic arrow heads which were up to 5,000 years old. The latter looked in almost pristine condition especially alongside the 13th century iron arrow points from Meols. The time spent in the store passed very quickly and we wished we could have stayed for the rest of the day!”
By Maurice H.
By Maurice H.