Mrs Museum

SOME people go on holiday and buy a stick of rock. Helen and Alan Bainbridge came to Yorkshire and bought the Swaledale Museum.

They had, to be fair, been regular visitors from their home in Oxfordshire to a holiday cottage in Swaledale where Alan has family connections.

Helen knew a bit about museums too. She was working in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the biggest in the world for decorative arts and design. Swaledale Museum, in contrast, is not much bigger than a badminton court. When the previous owners asked the couple to take it on, they thought it was a joke.

“But they kept asking us. And in the end we thought why not?” says Helen.

Life was at a bit of a crossroads. It seemed like a good idea. So they went back to London and told friends and colleagues they’d bought a museum.

The way you do...

They’d met at the Royal College of Art. Alan is a potter and eminently practical. Helen, in her other life, is Dr Helen Clifford, freelance exhibition curator – the Goldsmiths’ Company has asked her to do an exhibition on Gold in Britain, ready for the Olympics – expert on Georgian silver, writer and university lecturer.

But in Reeth she’s “Mrs Museum Lady” and enjoys every minute.

The museum was a labour of love started by Erica Law and her husband, Don, in the Seventies. By the time Mrs Law sold it to the Bainbridges she was 83. And it was ready for a make over.

Helen says: “It was full of really lovely things and important, interesting things. But there was also a trunk full of mice, beetles, damp...” And surprises.

“We found an entire archive just stuffed under the floorboards.”

The floorboards also revealed a stash of Woodbines, boot polish and antigas ointment hidden by wartime soldiers billeted there during their sixweek training in Catterick.

In reality, the Bainbridges had bought a building, bits of it in dire need of renovation, “a lot of hard physical work”. Originally a pair of late 17th Century cottages, it has been turned into the Wesleyan day school in 1836, then the Sunday school. When the Army moved out after the war, it became the home of Reeth Wesley Guild and used for badminton and pantomimes – one of which was re-enacted a few years ago.

“All the exhibits are held in trust.

So if we ever give up, everything stays with the community or goes to other collections,” says Helen.

But the Bainbridges have made their mark – white paint, light floorboards.

It is now brighter, lighter, welcoming. The almost derelict vestry and store rooms have been turned into a holiday cottage which helps towards the costs. Helen had been cleaning it just before we arrived.

Multi-skilled or what.

“We’re not a charity, we’re a business,”

Helen says. “I panic every time we have to see the accountant – but we couldn’t survive without a fantastic team of volunteers.”

The museum is hidden in a corner of Reeth green, down a cobbled path.

You go past the cottage garden and in through the original front door.

Sun streams in. There’s a pot of coffee on the go, a table and chairs, a vase of flowers from the garden just back from being exhibited in Reeth show.

It is very much a community museum.

As well as being staffed by volunteers, it’s the centre for all sorts of activities and not just that panto revival. There’s a knitting group, a project to record Swaledale Voices.

Other people are going through all the Poor Law records – a boon for family historians – or recording old buildings. There are talks and lectures so popular that they get sold out and some have to be repeated.

Above all, it’s a place where people know their treasures will be appreciated, a sort of home from home.

“If it’s anything to do with Swaledale or Arkengarthdale then we want it,” says Helen. “Other things too if they are particularly interesting.”

So people clearing houses bring them old treasures. Builders working in the village came across a hoard of old political posters, including one for the Liberals. The local candidate in the last election is pictured with it.

Didn’t do him much good.

Unlike many museums, people are often encouraged to handle the exhibits.

They can even play the restored Sunday school harmonium.

“That came with the building,”

says Helen. “It was supplied by J B Smithson of Leyburn. We had it restored and of course it’s great to hear people play it. That’s what it’s for.”

THE collection is a snapshot of Swaledale life through time.

From the geology which made it the lead mining area, to the farming tools to some of the 17 shops that were in the village not that many years ago – Pedleys boot and shoe store, or the drapers. There’s a section on the amazing Dr WC Speirs, Reeth’s’ GP from 1907 until 1963.

There are memories of washing day, tools and trinkets.

“Every object has a story and it’s a story of the people who made it or used it,” says Helen. “When you hold it in your hands and think about what it was used for, there’s a direct connection over time. Just something like an oil can made from an old cocoa tin.”

As well as the everyday treasures, there are some real beauties – the carefully worked samplers and the exquisitely embroidered 18th Century pockets. “Before women had handbags, they used these instead, attached to their belts,” says Helen.

In the background, and with specialist knowledge, Alan is always ready to help. “Without him, I just couldn’t do this,” says Helen.

Many of the items go out on loan to schools to fascinate the children.

Some, like embroidered linens are for sale – along with the splendid brooches made of old buttons and the little kits for dressing peg dolls, books, bags, cards and patchwork packs – to raise funds.

Although it is all very professionally done, there is also a great atmosphere in the little museum. It’s friendly, informal, almost family As well as the items on display, the museum has built up an archive of written material and records – family history boxes, photographs, scrap books, papers concerned with sport, religion, education, lead mining, farming and business, vital and fascinating resources for amateur and professional historians.

Someone had just brought in a tiny portable typewriter. An ingenious bit of kit from 1911, it folds in half and fits into a box not much bigger than a book. Almost immediately – once we’ve all played with it –- Helen clears a shelf in a display cabinet, moves a few things around and the typewriter is on show.

“Things never moved that quickly in the V & A,” she says.

But they can when it’s your own museum.

■ Swaledale Museum, The Green, Reeth. Tel: 01748- 884118. swaledalemuseum.

org. Open from Easter to October 21, every day except Saturdays, 10.30am to 5.30pm. Adults £3, accompanying children free. There is a small charge for use of archive material. Next lecture, September 22; Knitting Cafe, September 27.

Photographic Exhibition Living Exposed – unusual photos of local landscape taken by eight young visiting photographers – from September 18 to 25.