Chelmsford Museum, Essex

The best way to test the success or otherwise of a new museum is to visit at half-term. When I arrived at Chelmsford Museum on a freezing cold day in February, the “new bit” (as the £5m extension has been christened by its visitors) was heaving with excited children dashing from interactive to interactive while wearing masks they’d made in a half-term workshop.

This year sees the 175th anniversary of Chelmsford Museum, which has been housed in the Victorian Oaklands House since 1930. It’s a classic local museum, with the usual mix of archaeology, natural and social history, plus some iconic and much-loved exhibits, such as a stuffed bear and a living beehive (pictured above).

In January Chelmsford opened a contemporary two-storey extension, sympathetically designed by architects Thomas Ford & Partners to balance the original museum building.

It houses galleries telling the story of Chelmsford’s industrial heritage, spaces for education and temporary exhibitions, as well as a new museum of the Essex regiment. This is the culmination of almost 30 years of discussions about enlarging the museum or moving it from its present site in Oaklands Park; after a failed Heritage Lottery Fund bid, the council provided the funding for the extension.

The new building, which effectively doubles the museum exhibition space, works well, with large windows acting as giant showcases, enabling the galleries to be seen from the park outside.

The glass entrance, much more enticing than the front door of the old building and more accessible, thrusts the visitor straight into the light and airy 20th-century Bright Sparks gallery, telling the story of Chelmsford’s industrial pioneers, Guglielmo Marconi, the father of wireless communication, and Colonel RE Crompton, an early electrical engineer.

Chelmsford was the home of the world’s first radio factory, the UK’s first electrical engineering firm, and the first British manufacturer of rolling bearings. Though it’s a challenge to make ballbearings interesting, the story lends itself to simple but effective interactives, and the design of the showcases picks up the industrial theme. The Museum of the History of Science in Oxford has loaned items from its Marconi collection to enrich the displays.

Glittering prizes

On the upper floor of the new extension, the entrance to the Essex Regiment Museum is guarded by two figures, one an 18th-century private, the other a contemporary squaddie dressed for service in Afghanistan.

There are cases crammed with a series of mini-tableaux from the foundation of the regiment through to current operations in the 20th and 21st century, including the kit of a National Service conscript in 1950s Hong Kong, and graffiti and posters from 1990s Northern Ireland.

The glittering focal point is a display of five regimental silver drums, funded by public subscription as a memorial to the Boer War, and the Salamanca Eagle, looted from the French in 1863. Throughout, the focus is on the people; audio points provide some moving reminiscences from men who served in the regiment.

Punks and sissies

In addition to the new extension, the galleries within the original museum building telling the story of Chelmsford from 1500 to the present day have been refurbished. These are particularly successful, making effective use of small spaces through colour, graphics and lighting.

New displays tell the postwar story – the popular annual carnival (complete with carnival costumes to try on) and the town’s music scene, including the disastrous Chelmsford Punk Festival of 1977, a washout in every sense of the word.

One 20th-century success story, the Chelmsford-born potter Grayson Perry, is marked with the Chelmsford Sissies, a pot depicting a fictitious transvestite festival in Chelmsford based on the civil war story of captured Royalist troops who were paraded through the town in drag.

The new galleries are a vibrant addition to the museum. But, like all partial refurbishments, the new extension has created circulation problems. The visitor route is unclear, as, although the entrance is now in the new extension, the Chelmsford story starts in the Victorian building by the old entrance. Better signage would solve this problem.

And the assumption appears to have been that the audience will be entirely local; the lack of maps and introductory text sometimes make the story hard to follow if you’re not from Chelmsford.

Jane Weeks is a museum consultant

Cost £5m
Main funder Chelmsford Borough Council
Exhibition design Ronayne Design
Architect Thomas Ford & Partners