Revealed - Topsham Museum’s Hidden Treasure Chest!

A much-loved Museum has discovered a treasure chest of items it knew little or nothing about, thanks to a special project undertaken entirely by volunteers.

The aim of the project was to trawl through a vast reserve store of artefacts held in Topsham Museum but not previously put on display. Volunteers then assessed the historical value of each item, cleaning, indexing and photographing each in turn.

The end result will be the creation of a “hidden gems” section on the Museum website, allowing visitors to see the items for the first time.

“It was a voyage of discovery, through thousands of items. Many had been donated to Topsham Museum over the past 40 years, and they had simply been stored carefully but without being catalogued or researched” explains project leader Jan Lawson, a long-standing volunteer at the Museum and one of its trustees.

“There were treasures which we didn’t even know about. Some of the stand-out items include ship’s biscuits - used by sailors in past centuries, and part of Topsham’s maritime history - plus children’s shoes from when the town was much poorer than it is today” Jan explains.

The project was funded by a grant from the Arts Council’s Museum Development South West organisation, which allowed the Museum to buy-in specialist training for volunteers as well as the basics - storage boxes, cleaning gel, magnifying glasses and all-important bubble-wrap.

One added bonus from the entire project was the way it attracted volunteers who were hungry to know about Topsham’s local history and to help preserve it in a way the wider public could enjoy.

“Overall we had 27 volunteers working on assessing, researching, cleaning, indexing and photographing the artefacts. Over the past six months they have put in an amazing 656 hours of work in total, but best of all they have continued with the work now even though the formal project exercise has finished” adds Jan.

So far there are just over 200 boxes of carefully-curated items. Topsham Museum is currently temporarily closed for repair work but when it re-opens later in the year, there will be a revolving exhibition of different items from the reserve, allowing people to view them in person.