Museum unveils its street of shops

When Frome Heritage Museum re-opens its doors on 2nd March, visitors will find that the lower gallery has undergone a complete makeover. 

In early 2018 the retirement of Mr.Thorp from Garston Vets and Mr. Brake from farming led to the closure of their two small private museums in Frome and Berkley respectively. Both collections were very generously donated to Frome Heritage Museum and a mock-up of a veterinary practice was constructed to display many of the hundreds of artefacts received. 

The vets was built alongside the ever popular Maggs’ chemist shop and plans were drawn up to extend this row of buildings along the wall. Museum chair, Emma Robinson said, “It’s been a long-held dream to build a row of shops to join up with Maggs’ and it’s great to see it finally come to fruition.” Chief architect and builder was the museum’s new collections curator, Colin Wisbey, who, with a small number of helpers, has transformed the gallery.

Maggs’ itself has been remodelled to display even more of the original items from the chemist shop and a new window allows the public far better views of the interior. The first new additions are a shop and a public house. The shop design is generic so that the display can be easily changed throughout the year to represent different businesses. The first manifestation will be a toy shop from around the 1950s, although some of the items are somewhat older. Toys and games have come a long way in a short time and children especially will be surprised to see toys made of wood or tinplate rather than plastic.

The pub next door will be from a similar period, with a bar-top covered in old pennies, in memory of the one formerly installed at The Portway Hotel in the town. It will act as a backdrop for some of the museum’s large collection of bottles and will incorporate items and signage from several old Frome pubs including the Crown, formerly in the Market Place, The Weaver that once stood on the corner of Somerset Road and The Butts and the Lamb Hotel, now the Cornerhouse at the top of Bath Street. Colin has been able to incorporate many items collected from and donated by businesses in Frome, such as etched glass panels that have lain for years in the museum basement and he has cleverly reused materials from old display cabinets. This has been an exercise in both heritage display and recycling.

The third element is a forge, work on which continues due to the complexity of the roof construction. This will again be a flexible display, with the artefacts being changed from time to time to reflect the on-site forges formerly employed by many of Frome’s old industries, such as Singer’s, Cockey’s, the Somerset Smithy and brewing engineers Wilson and Scotchman. The street scene has been enhanced by the positioning of authentic downpipes, mile posts and original Cockey’s street lamps, again drawn from the museum’s own collections.

The museum is situated at the bottom of North Parade and is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10.00am to 2.00pm and on those Sundays when the hugely popular independent market is held. The museum receives no external funding and is reliant on donations and volunteers. They would be happy to have more of either, but what they really want is for visitors from the town and surrounding area to come in and just have a good look around.