Kegworth Heritage Centre

Spring/Summer Message 2023

Kegworth Heritage Centre

There’s Definitely A Spring In The Air

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It’s been quite a week at Kegworth Heritage Centre, and in a really good way (mostly - but more on that later). I’m starting to visualise KHC as a huge five thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. We have a picture on the box that we trying to make with all the jigsaw pieces, but this puzzle has been shared by many different people over the last thirty years, and we’re not sure if all the original pieces are in the box. Some of the pieces may not even be part of our picture, and we have to decide what we need to discard as irrelevant.

Over the last five years, we’ve been patiently sifting through all the pieces, and using good jigsaw-solving skills, we’ve established the outside edges, most of the bottom part of the puzzle and a lot of bits of the main picture. And now, we need to join all these chunks up and fill in the gaps.

This week, we held the new volunteer introduction meeting. To be completely honest, we held the first of the new volunteer introduction meetings, as, unfortunately, none of the invitees who tried to join remotely could actually join the session, so it was only a subgroup who joined at the museum who got the full treatment. Technology is wonderful when it works, but sadly, that wasn’t the case this time and human error was to blame. My human error, to be blunt. But we learn from our mistakes and the problem should not occur again, although after 40 years working in and at the mercy of IT I really should know better than to say something like that! I will arrange a second session for those who missed out as soon as possible,

The point is that we now have a group of about a dozen people who are anxious to roll up their sleeves and get involved. We finally have a collective of jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts, something that has been holding us back for too long, and it means we can really accelerate our activities from here on.
Some of you may remember Robert Williams, who was a trustee of the Kegworth Museum, but who sadly died in 2020. Robert had built up a collection of archaeological finds over the years, mostly from the area near Redhill Marina, and his wish was that the collection would find its way to the museum for the community to enjoy. I’m really excited to share the news that, this week, Robert’s collection finally made it here, and we are intending to make it the centrepiece of our reopening. The collection consists of about 200 pieces; Roman and mediaeval coins, pieces of jewellery and other finds. We’d like to thank Hilary, Robert’s wife, for all her help in making this a reality.
We’re hoping that something a little more contemporary is also going to be on display when we reopen, as we have been asked if we would bring the Coronation Post Box topper into our collection. We naturally jumped at the opportunity, although it’s currently getting some necessary TLC after some of its ‘adventures’ in the village. Thanks to the Kegworth Crafting Group for their kind suggestion!
Finally…

We’ve had a few enquiries about the “Aspects of History” book, which tells the story of Kegworth. I’m happy to say that copies will be available from Picture This on Dragwell and will be in stock by the time you read this! Picture This is open from Monday to Saturday, between the hours of 9 and 12:30. Copies will also be on sale at Dog & Jones in the Market Place. The book is a steal at just £5!

All this excitement has had quite an effect on the trustees. We’ve had more than our fair share of setbacks in the last few years, and all three of us have been in dark places at times. But we collectively made the commitment that KHC would rise again and that we would not give up. We even have new signs to help illuminate the path and show us the way!

Onwards and upwards!


Ally, KHC Chairman.
Prague, May 23rd 2023.
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