Wisbech Museum hosts ‘friends’ from all over the UK

The Friends of provincial museums all over the UK were in Wisbech recently for their national conference, hosted by the Friends of Wisbech and Fenland Museum.

The gathering was for the British Association of Friends of Museums and was held last weekend (October 4 and 5).

A show-stopping treat available to those delegates who arrived by Friday morning was one of the 80 seats at local artist and teacher Mia Hansson's talk about her copy of the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry, which was laid out for viewing at St Peter's Church Hall.

The profits from this final public view of Mia's astonishing achievement (it will take her three more years to complete) were donated by her to the Friends of Wisbech Museum.

All 40 delegates were at the Luxe Cinema next day for the conference whose theme was Great Expectations, discussing how Friends' societies can help provincial museums survive in these financially challenging times.

They were then welcomed to Wisbech's rare purpose-built early Victorian Museum by its chairman Steve McGregor and curator Robert Bell, who showed them its greatest treasures, the manuscript copy of Dickens' Great Expectations and the unique chest full of African-made trade goods that Wisbech-born abolitionist Thomas Clarkson took with him round Britain on his campaigns to end slavery.

A formal dinner for 35 delegates followed at the Crown Lodge, Outwell, where the guest speaker was Wisbech and Fenland Museum president Richard Barnwell.