Day of the Dead at Castleford Museum

In the past, people have buried their loved ones with an amazing array of meaningful objects. 

Castleford Museum displays some of these locally buried treasures, from Bronze Age axe heads to the incredible Iron Age Chariot (yes, a whole chariot was buried!) showing evidence of how past people have celebrated their dead.

We have taken this celebration as inspiration for a Day of the Dead themed event at the museum on Saturday 31st October.

The Mexican Day of the Dead is a festival which focuses on the tradition that on one day a year, the spirits of dead people are allowed to come back and party with their friends and family!  It isn't supposed to be scary, but is a happy festival!

The festival involves dressing up and face-painting, lots of colour, marigold flowers and skulls!  

So pop into Castleford Museum - and be prepared for lots of skulls!

New Adult Programme Launched!

We are pleased to announce our new adult offer - including talks from TV and Radio personalities, creative artist-led workshops and curator-talks

The Extraordinary Life of Charles Waterton – with John Welding

Wednesday 28 October

Wakefield Museum Learning Zone

From 6pm

Adult session – ages 18+

See the exhibition - meet the artist!
Meet local artist, John Welding for a special insight into how the Young Waterton comic strip was made. See close-up examples of the materials and working processes used (Scripting, Layouts, Inking, Colouring and Lettering), and get tips from an expert!

FREE, but booking essential on 01924 302700 or email as places are limited.

Nightingales – Paper bird workshop – with Andy Singleton

Wednesday 11 November

Photo by Nick Singleton

Wakefield Museum Learning Zone

From 6pm

Adult session – ages 18+

Have you seen the beautiful paper birds on display in the atrium in Wakefield One? Meet artist Andy Singleton and get hands-on instruction to make your own paper bird!

FREE, but booking essential on 01924 302700 or or email as places are limited.

Fused Glass Coasters for Christmas - with Claire Lake

Saturday 14 November

Wakefield Museum Learning Zone

10am to 4pm

Adult session – ages 18+

£100 per head – including light refreshments (Lunch not provided, but there is a café on site)

Make your own beautiful kiln fused glass 4 coaster set to enhance your decor or the perfect personalised gift in time for Christmas.

A maximum of 8 places are available to ensure personalised tuition throughout the session.

Bookings with full payment must be made in advance.  Click here to follow a link to online payments

Potwallopers and Plumpers - Britain's first secret ballot in Pontefract

Tuesday 17 November

Wakefield Museum Learning Zone

12noon to 1pm

Adult session 

Pontefract was centre stage in August 1872 when the first secret ballot in Britain was used to elect a Member of Parliament, allowing people to vote in secret by placing an ‘X’ on a ballot paper next to the name of their choice.

The box is still marked with the seals used to ensure the votes were not tampered with. The seal was made with a liquorice stamp, used to make Pontefract cakes from a local liquorice factory.

David Evans and John Whitaker, Curators at Pontefract & Castleford Museums and Wakefield Museum, have recently taken the box to Westminster and talked about it there. This is is the talk they gave recently in Parliament highlighting its significance in the history of British democracy.

FREE, but booking essential on 01924 302700 or email as places are limited.

The Rationing Diet - with Dr Annie Gray

Wednesday 18 November

Wakefield Museum Learning Zone

From 6pm

Adult session – ages 18+

Meet TV and Radio Food Historian, Dr Annie Gray for this fascinating talk about wartime rationing foods – and with tasting samples!

FREE, but booking essential on 01924 302700 or email as places are limited.

Create a Hand Bound Sketchbook - with Timid Elk

Saturday 12 December

Wakefield Museum Learning Zone

10am to 4pm

Adult session – ages 18+

£15 per head – including light refreshments (Lunch not provided, but there is a café on site)

Learn the technique of hand binding to create an individual sketchbook. Decorate your sketchbook by taking inspiration and utilising a selection of Ordinance Survey maps.

Bookings with full payment must be made in advance.  Click here to follow a link to online payments

Ring making workshop

Wednesday 27 January

Wakefield Museum Learning Zone

From 6pm

Adult session – ages 18+

£32 per head – including light refreshments

Inspired by ‘Precious’ our exhibition of rings from the V&A, design and make your own statement rings using glass beads, Swarovski crystals and pearls. You’ll create stylish and fun jewellery that can accessorise any outfit.

Bookings with full payment must be made in advance.  Click here to follow a link to online payments

Textured Wall-hanging – with Ruth Singer

Wednesday 24 February 2016

Wakefield Museum Learning Zone

6pm to 8.30pm

Adult session – ages 18+

£10 per head – including light refreshments

Make a mini textile hanging inspired but the colours, textures, plants and wildlife of the rainforest with textile artist, Ruth Singer.

Bookings with full payment must be made in advance.  Click here to follow a link to online payments

Sugar and Spice – Tudor to Georgian Sugarcraft – with Ivan Day

Saturday 27 February 2016

Wakefield Museum Learning Zone

From 10am to 4pm

Adult session – ages 18+

£50 per head – including lunch

A hands-on workshop of early cold sugar work, led by food historian Ivan Day, using real period moulds. Try your hand at Tudor to Georgian sugarpaste work to make moulded sweetmeats.

Bookings with full payment must be made in advance.  Click here to follow a link to online payments

Meet the Curator

Bring in your objects for advice on their care and research
Wakefield Museum - First Thursday of every month 2-4pm                    
Pontefract Museum - Second Wednesday of every month 10am  to 12 noon
Castleford Museum - Third Thursday of every month 10am to 12 noon

Castleford Adult Mornings

First Monday of the month (term time only)

Castleford Museum

11am – 12noon

FREE

Adults, you can join in too!  Pop into the museum for the chance to try a new craft and make new friends!

No need to book

Download our new Events and Exhibitions leaflet here:

The Extraordinary Life of Charles Waterton - Comic Exhibition Launch

A special event is being held at Wakefield Museum
Wednesday 30 September 5pm to 7.30pm

To celebrate the launch of our new comic exhibition - The Extraordinary Life of Charles Waterton - we are very excited to announce that artists John Welding, Staz Johnson and Richard Bell will be in the museum, along with John Whitaker, the museum curator and writer of the Victorian adventurer comic.

The Victorian adventurer who captured a caiman crocodile by riding on its back - the perfect action comic hero!

Charles Waterton was famed for his interest in nature, and travelled widely collecting specimens before setting up the world's first nature reserve at Waterton Hall, near Wakefield. 

For more information about how the comic has been produced, see this earlier blog post.Wakefield Museum has an extensive collection of Waterton artefacts - including a giant Cayman which is exhibited in Wakefield Library and his diaries which detail his travel experiences and his life.

Waterton is well-known for his 'creations' - his taxidermy inventions of grotesques. 

To celebrate this aspect of Charles Waterton, we are also delighted to host - for one night only - the amazing Palace of Curiosities - a Victorian Travelling Sideshow with objects including a mermaid and a unicorn's horn!

In their own words:
Every now and then we find someone from history whose life really needs celebrating - Take Charles Waterton a Victorian man who created taxidermy of stuffed animals and presented them as political cartoon satire - The Palace of Curiosities is proud to announce we will be exhibiting at Wakefield Museum to honour this mans life and achievements on 30th September 2015 - 5pm-7.30pm as part of Wakefield's "The Art Walk".

The professor with his mermaid

Dirigibles and Tea!

'Come, ride in my dirigible and we shall talk of tea.'  

The fashion for tea has been replenished by the steampunk genre and its delight in 'tea duelling'.  Steampunk’s heady mix of high fashion blends cultures, infusing the modern with old style technology.   It is steeped in  a literacy which would have delighted the diarist Samuel Pepys who wrote on this day in 1660:

‘To the office, where Sir W. Batten, Colonel Slingsby, and I sat awhile, and Sir R. Ford coming to us about some business, we talked together of the interest of this kingdom to have a peace with Spain and a war with France and Holland; where Sir R. Ford talked like a man of great reason and experience. And afterwards I did send for a cup of tee (a China drink) of which I never had drank before, and went away.’
25th September 1660

However, it would be nearly another hundred years before tea would become infused into our national habits. The Astbury Ware teapot in our collection charmingly reflects the start of the dedicated teapot.   Production started in 1720 its small size reflecting the value of tea which had a 119% tax, the tea being prized by smugglers who shipped it to and from America.
  

Astbury Ware

Our trade with China for tea and its fine porcelain led to technological revolution in ceramics in Britain. Wrenthorpe pottery in Wakefield struggled to keep pace with Leeds, Castleford and the Don valley, because it lacked the ability to make the new porcelains. The pink enamelling on the 1780s Leeds ware teapot was a refreshing change to brown utilitarian pots. 

Leeds Ware

The excess tax and smuggling boiled over with the 1773 tea act and the Boston Tea party in America, the problems gained a head of steam and in 1784 Richard Twinning advised William Pitt the Younger to reduce the tax to 12.5%

It didn’t take too long before this stimulating brew of politics, changes in technology and trade popularised tea drinking into the national drink.

There are some fine services in the Wakefield's collection and many would be welcome in the wild world of steampunk. What they lack in cogs and top hats they more than make up for in decoration. The Rockingham set for example:

Rockingham tea set

But for sheer volume you have to go for our favourite - the 1870 Barge ware - a fine spectacle at any party:

Barge Ware

These wonderful tea pots, and more, are currently on display in Wakefield Museum.  The barge ware pot featured here really does have to be seen to be believed! 

For those of you with Steampunk or Victoriana inclinations, or intrigued to know more, come along to Wakefield Museum next Wednesday evening, when we will be host to the amazing Palace of Curiosities - a Victorian sideshow with a difference.  

Wonder at the bizarre collection of objects that will amaze and astound you all in a feast of incredulity and disbelief.  All the atmosphere, wonderment and macabre family fun of a Victorian travelling fairground curiosity sideshow – seeing is believing!

The Palace of Curiosities

Wednesday 30 September

Wakefield Museum

5pm to 7.30pm

Suitable for all!

Your Museum Needs You!

Help us make a new display

We are creating a new family friendly display at Castleford Forum Museum.

What would you like to discover?

We will be running free family activity workshops too.

Fill out our quick survey and enter a free prize draw to win a

 £10 voucher for M&S.

 

 

Follow this link to complete the  Survey

 

The Romans are coming!

This Saturday sees the Romans taking over Castleford!

Come up to the museum to handle real Roman objects, have a Roman hairstyle makeover, try on costume and meet a Roman metalworker making bronze jewellery.  

Lots of Roman-inspired crafts and fun for all the family - and it's free!

Have a Roman Hairstyle!

Meet Romans in Castleford!

See (and handle!) real Roman objects in the museum

Precious

Edmund Waterton, son of the famous 19^th Century naturalist Charles Waterton, was a bit of a hoarder. 

Edmund Waterton

He collected all kinds of relics, and managed to blow the family fortune in the process. The Victoria and Albert Museum acquired his collection in 1871. It included a staggering 760 rings, forming the backbone of the museum’s metalwork collection, from ancient Roman key rings (that’s rings that are also keys, rather than the thing you grabbed on the way out the front door this morning) through to 18^th century poesy rings. 

Edmund Waterton's ring cabinet

The V & A are kindly loaning 40 of these rings to Wakefield Museum for our upcoming exhibition ‘Precious’. As well as the rings, we will be showing, from the Wakefield collection, the cabinet where Edmund kept the rings and, with the help of interactives, exploring the many different meanings these rings can take on, like love, faith and magic. The rings will look great too!

‘Precious’ opens in December. Watch this space for more details...