Learning Team Update

Hello everyone! Just grabbing a minute in between school visits to give you all a little catch up on some exciting developments in our Learning world at the Museum!

We’ve been working really hard over the past six months to improve the overall standard of our Learning & Education offer at the Museum. We’ve made several changes to our schools offer, including our updated Education Pack and a clearer booking system. We’re really pleased to tell you that our efforts have been recognised and we have been awarded the Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge, awarded to us by the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom. This is a nationally recognised seal of approval, that lets teachers know that we provide a high standard of learning experience, in a safe and engaging environment.

There’s another logo you might be seeing around, as we’re also happy to have become one of the Children’s University registered Learning Destinations. Children’s University is a national organisation that encourages children to have learning experiences outside of school hours. Schools sign up to be Children’s University members, and the children within the school are all given a Passport to Learning. This looks just like a passport and the idea is that when children visit one of the CU official Learning Destinations they can do an activity and receive a stamp in their passport. We’ve already had a handful of Children’s University participants collect a stamp during the recent half term holidays, and we hope to welcome many more in the future.

Speaking of half term, we had an incredibly busy week, with lots and lots of families coming in out of the rain to have a look around the Museum and take part in one of our activities. We’re already getting ready for the next school holiday, (my favourite time of the year,) Christmas! I’ve just been cutting out some gorgeous Christmas pictures ready for our Christmas Craft weekends. We couldn’t decide which era we liked best so we’re having a look at Victorian & Wartime Christmas traditions over the first three weekends in December. We’ll have a fun craft activity available each weekend as well as information about how Christmas was celebrated in the past.

Behind the scenes we’re working on some really exciting partnerships with local schools and colleges to develop new education sessions for next year, which we’ll be telling you more about in 2012. We’ve also been working in partnership with Centro, the West Midlands public transport organisation. We’ve come up with an exciting new schools session that looks at Sustainable Transport, in conjunction with the work that Centro do in schools. I’m really excited about this partnership and the opportunities it will present us with for the future.

Finally, don’t forget to have a look at our all new Learning pages on the Museum’s website. We’ve new areas for Schools & Colleges, Families and Other Visitors, as well as creating an activities calendar to keep you updated on all of our upcoming family activities. We’ll be updating this part of the website over the coming months with more photos of what we get up to, news stories and more, so watch this space!

Thanks to everyone for all your continued support, we hope to see many of you over the coming months. Have a wonderful winter!

Naomi

Billy Baxter’s Kawasaki Ninja ZX-12R

We have recently acquired another record holder to add to the long list of other record breaking vehicles to have been displayed at the Museum over the years.

This latest acquisition though comes in the form of a 2002 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-12R motorcycle, one of the fastest ever production motorcycles to be produced by the Japanese company since 1954.

So what’s so special about this particular bike? Well in August 2003, Billy Baxter, an ex-soldier who is completely blind, smashed the then current blind solo motorcycle Land Speed Record of 78.4mph, with an incredible speed of164.8mph.

This was achieved using a special autocom communication system, with the aid of outriders from the Flying Gunners – the British army’s display team.

See Billy breaking the record.

Billy also appeared on BBCs Top Gear, and drove one of their ‘reasonably priced cars’ around the circuit in 2.02 minutes.

On display at the Museum for a period of six months, this Kawasaki Ninja ZX-12R is sure to excite those fortunate enough to view it whilst becoming yet another scoop for Coventry Transport Museum.

Learning Team Update

It’s been some time since our last blog in July, I can’t quite believe we’re already nearing the end of September. We had a great Summer Holiday here at the Museum, with loads of families taking part in our Ace Activity trails and craft activities. You kept us very busy!
At the end of August we reached the 1980s in our Through the Decades weekends. We were lucky enough to have partnered up with the BBC’s Domesday Reloaded project for this weekend and had an absolutely brilliant time. If you weren’t here you missed our 1980s ‘Bad’ Fashion show, a live (and somewhat amazing) performance from Coventry’s Kombat Breakers, 80s fancy dress, karaoke – and not to forget, THE Audi Quattro from TV series Ashes to Ashes on Millennium Place. Amongst all the 80s fun we even found a couple of people who managed to solve the Rubik’s Cube! We were really pleased with how the weekend went and it certainly looked like all of our visitors had lots of fun.
Behind the scenes over the summer we’ve been working hard at completing our brand new Education Pack, which explains all the different sessions we offer for schools visiting the Museum. We’re really pleased with how it looks and excited about the new sessions we’ve added. One such session is our new Evacuee Experience. We tried it out for the first time on a school group a couple of weeks ago and were very happy with how it went. You can download our new Education Pack on the website.
The new Education Pack is one of a series of changes and updates we’ll be making to the Learning Department at the Museum over the coming months. Watch this space for news of exciting updates and additions to our schools and family programs.
Krissy and I recently attended a really great training day at the ThinkTank in Birmingham, all about working with, and providing for, families in museums. We were both really inspired and came away with a whole host of ideas of how we can improve the Museum for families. We’re working hard to put some of our ideas into practice, so look out for changes over the next month or two and let us know what you think. If anyone has any suggestions of what would make the Museum better for you and your family please feel free to let us know.
As well as getting back into the swing of things with a very busy schedule of visiting schools, we’re also preparing for October half term (which seems to be approaching scarily fast!) This half term our activities and trails will be themed to our forthcoming Wheels & Waves exhibition, which opens on 20th October. So grab your board shorts and come on down!
Ooh – and we’ve also now got our own Coventry Transport Museum Learning Twitter account - please follow us @CTMLearning!
Enjoy autumn everyone - Bye for now x

If walls could tell a story...

It’s easy to get distracted in the archive of Coventry Transport Museum. Recently, on dealing with a University enquiry regarding sports and social activities of motor factory workers, I stumbled across an interesting advert taken from a 1966 issue of Modern Motoring & Travel. 

 The advert was submitted by a Coventry printing firm called ‘Edwards’ at Quinton Road, yet it was the building they were situated in that interested me. Partly recognisable today as an Ibis Hotel, the original building formed the west section of Parkside, an area located quite central to Coventry with a history of cycle and motor companies to have been occupants there over the decades. These included the likes of Velox, Iden, Deasy, Siddeley-Deasy, Armstrong-Siddeley and Rolls-Royce, now sadly all gone and Parkside today has been regenerated into a Coventry University Technology Park.

The building in the advert was most famously occupied by the Swift Company, originated in the late 1860s as the Coventry Machinists as cycle makers at nearby Cheylesmore. Also being part occupied by chocolate manufacturers during the early 1900s, thousands of ‘Swift’ cycles, motorcycles and cars were made here until the company closed around 1931. Extremely fortunate to have survived the air-raids of the Second World War, this image shows the factory very well intact, and clearly before the central ring-road was completed in 1974. The memorial seen in an Island here, still exists today but was moved to the island between Ringway St. Patricks and Ringway St. Johns.

Damien Kimberley - Curator, Research & Information

Diary of an Archive Intern

Hello everyone! My name is Daniela and unfortunately I’m writing to say goodbye to museum staff and share with all of you my experience in the archive with the curatorial folks.

Just a quick background on myself. I’m from Italy where I graduated in Science and Technology applied to Cultural Heritage.

You would say..what’s that? I know..it’s not easy to understand that somebody has to analyse chemical/physical/geological samples before starting to restore a piece of our past in order to understand the reasons for the deterioration. However, my passion for museum field started when I attended a course in Museology. Then I started to search for more exciting courses arould the world. Finally, I found the best Masters course in England (at least they say it is), Museum Studies at the Univeristy of Leicester.

Oops, I realised late that I couldn’t speak English at all! So, I decided to leave Italy a few months after my graduation, fly to England and start to learn some english words. And here I am, in the last part of the Masters course, in the Coventry Transport Museum for the work placement.

Initially, I decided to work in the archive because I think it would be like opening a magic window on our past. Yes, it’s magic because everytime I meet an object a new story appears in front of me ready to be uncovered. Indeed, you are able to discover the fascinating stories related to each object, in special way working in this archive I learnt many things about Coventry, as the birthplace of the British cycle and motor industry. As you can read on the museum website, the Museum’s archive is truly a great resource for anyone interested in the history of Coventry’s transport industry and the British transport industry in general.

One of the mini-projects I did was to re-organize the holding bay in order to clear space for new objects coming in. I met so many objects enabling me to understand who were behind some cycle and motor companies from the past Coventry. In fact, I found boxes full of bizarre and fantastic objects I have never seen before, such as old driving licenses, small parts of old cars, old plates, cycle lamps, maps and helmets just to mention a few of them.

Figure 1: some objects from the archive

For instance, I found an old black and white photograph showing a couple from Coventry on their tandem. The presenting letter written from their daughter was very touching. It tells how they coped in the World War II and their love for their tandem. That is absolutelly amazing, through an object you are able to know stories of people and time so far from you. It’s a completely dusty job but it’s definitely rewarding.

However, working in the archive is not so easy as it looks in terms of practical issues. In fact, most of the work in the archive are carried out by volunteers who are full of goodwill. I worked on many different mini-projects. I’ve unpacked boxes full of books (every day there are new objects coming in) and catalogued sales brochures, books, manuals, small objects and even the Thrust 2 (the fastest car in the world!) material purchased from J. Ackroyd (have a look to the Facebook page, they are our objects of the month!). You know my background is not in museum field but my supervisor, Megan, has been very patient and kind to teach me everything how to register an object from paperworks to digital database, mark an object and all procedures to entry an item in the museum.

Figure 2: the register and the special archive pen

Figure 3: technical manual shelves inside the archive

Figure 4: rolls aisle inside the archive

Overall it has been my first experience in a museum and i do really enjoy it! I have to thank all the curatorial team that have been so supportive with me. Now, I would like to carry on my new interest and look for a job!

Goodbye!

Oops i forgot to say one little thing about the archive world: it’s cold! So if you would like to do this job you have to wear a heavy jumper to keep you warm!!


Find out more about the Coventry Transport Museum archive.

Talbot Ledgers Archive Work

Staff in the archive section of the Museum have been working their way steadily through the piles of books, photographs, invoices and drawings. Occasionally something out of the ordinary turns up, and such a find was made recently. Four large ledgers were discovered in a pile of paperwork and although they were thought to be from the old Hillman factory, there were no obvious clues to their origin. However, a bit of detective work in checking the model types listed revealed them to be records of production from the Talbot Motor Company which was taken over by the Rootes Group in 1935.

Talbot started by importing French-built Clément-Bayard cars into Britain in 1902. In late 1904 the factory at Barlby Road, North Kensington, was finished and the company assembled cars from French made components. The first all-British Talbot appeared in 1906, and by 1910 the factory employed 600 men and could turn out between 50 and 60 cars per month. The fortunes of the company varied over the next thirty years, culminating in receivership in 1935 and subsequent takeover by Rootes.

The ledgers are a record of every car produced by Talbot between 1905 and 1938, and list each car in chassis number order together with brief details. These include engine number, wheelbase, wheel size, type of body, coachbuilder, date delivered and purchaser. Each of the entries (over 30,000) is handwritten and by only a small number of individuals – in fact the 7,000 plus entries in the fourth volume have been written by the same person.

Even more interesting are the histories behind some of the cars. Chassis number 5000 is one of the few cars to have no details listed, but in the notes column there is the pencilled comment “Competition Brooklands Racer”, and the date of building given as 7th November 1912. Could this be the 4½ litre Talbot in which Percy Lambert was the first person ever to cover a distance of 100 miles in an hour at Brooklands on 15th February 1913? And chassis numbers 31051 to 31054 are the famous cars raced so successfully by the Fox & Nicholl team in the early 1930s.

No less interesting is the social history. In the early days of production many cars were sold direct to individual customers, many of whom were titled, but even before 1914 most cars were being sold to dealers for onward sale. These dealers include names familiar a hundred years later, such as Mann Egerton and Caffyns, but also more exotic sounding names such as the Bombay Cycle Agency, the Oriental Motor Company and the Madras Stable Company. A number of chassis were exported to Australia. And although some customers were optimistically taking delivery of their new cars as late as 1915, production had been turned over to the war effort by that time. Whole production runs are shown as being delivered to the War Office or the Admiralty, many chassis being delivered for fitting with ambulance bodies. A large number of vehicles were destined for Russia, some fitted with the mysterious sounding “Hot Air Attachment”.

Unfortunately over a hundred years of use have taken their toll on the ledgers and they are too fragile to allow access for research purposes. But they are a significant addition to the Museum’s resources and work will continue to identify and catalogue more such information.

An 'Ace' Special Visitor

Last week we were delighted to be visited by Courtney Edenborough, son of Vick Edenborough who was the original owner of the Ace Cafe in London, on which our current exhibition Coming Of Age At The Ace Cafe is based.

Courtney was good enough to spend time sharing his recollections of the Ace in the 50s and 60s with staff at the museum, as well as being interviewed about his experiences for the Vic Minett show on BBC Radio Coventry & Warwickshire that afternoon.

We were fascinated to hear Courtney’s stories about life at the Ace – whilst he and his father were never hugely involved in the running of the cafe, which was one of five catering establishments owned by the family, Courtney’s weekly visits to collect the takings and have a meal were enough to provide him with a wealth of interesting tales from behind the counter.

It was great to hear that for many years the Ace’s best seller was the humble cup of tea – made in huge gallon tea pots and costing a ha’penny a cup when the cafe first opened, Courtney remembers the outcry from their loyal lorry driver customers each time the price of tea was raised. “They always came back in the end though” he told us.

But as we know it wasn’t all tea and sympathy at the cafe – whilst it was never intentionally promoted as a ‘bikers cafe’, over the years the Ace became a meeting place for young men and their bikes, and with them came some perhaps less desirable clientele. Courtney regaled us with stories of some of London’s criminal underworld who would come to the Ace for a celebratory meal after pulling off a big ‘job’ – but the police soon got wise to this and would come looking for them at the cafe!

Courtney himself was never a biker, in fact he told us about the one occasion he had ridden pillion on an AJS owned by one of the cafe’s customers and had the fright of his life as they burned off up the North Circular. Fortunately he was brought back to the Ace unharmed, but he was less lucky on the night he was coshed by a robber as he left with the week’s takings, causing injuries that have left him partially deaf later in life.

But there were loads of good times too, perhaps because the cafe was started in such a gentlemanly manner; Courtney’s father Vic sealed the deal to build the cafe on a handshake – no paperwork changed hands with the builder, no contracts were raised, but on this ‘gentlemans agreement’ one of the most iconic cafes in the UK was built and so began the fascinating story of the Ace.

When we asked Courtney what he thought of our Coming Of Age At The Ace Cafe exhibition he was extremely complimentary, saying that he thought we had captured the atmosphere and feeling of the old cafe perfectly – we couldn’t ask for higher praise than that.

Coming Of Age At The Ace Cafe, our exhibition which tells the story of the iconic cafe and its customers, is at Coventry Transport Museum until Sunday 2 October 2011. Full details and ticket prices here.