Cambridge and County Folk Museum
Judging by the comments book, the dominant feeling among those revisiting the Cambridge Folk Museum after its two-year redevelopment programme is relief.
And that's as it should be, because there are few more difficult tricks to pull off successfully than interfering with a well-loved institution without damaging its essential flavour. There's nothing easier to lose than charm.
The hand of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) can weigh exceedingly heavy on a small museum, but here the only immediate evidence of its involvement is a discrete slate plaque at the equally discrete, if not to say rather obscure, entrance.
Perhaps it doesn't compare to the mega-bucks at the Fitzwilliam, but a £786,000 grant is far from peanuts, and at a total cost of £1,044,000, this has been a major project for a museum that originated in a Pageant of Bygone Times arranged by the Federation of Women's Institutes in 1933.
The money has bought refurbishment of the listed, timber frame original building, plus the insertion of a lift and lavatories. There is also a new extension providing all the backroom services, offices, storage and an education room.
Housed in what was until 1935 the White Horse Inn, it is next door to the Kettle's Yard arts centre, in a fragment of Cambridge that was almost lost to the grandiose ambitions of the colleges to demolish any residue of the medieval vernacular that limited their expansion.
In fact, the building's survival, thanks to the Cambridge Preservation Society, makes not only the structure itself, but its history emblematic of the collections it houses.
Town versus gown, let alone men versus women, appear in the displays, where we learn that that the vice-chancellor retained his powers to send any woman found on the streets of Cambridge at night to the Spinning House, a gaol for prostitutes, until 1894.
So for almost 70 years, as the collections grew, the museum sustained its mission to tip the balance just a little bit in favour of the common objects, the everyday life of people in and around this city on the edge of the Fens.
Enid Porter took over in 1947 and ran the place single-handedly for 27 years, living beside the shop in a 1960s cottage constructed on the tight triangular site of the old inn yard.
Fast-forward to 2000, and the folk museum was suffering from what its curator, Cameron Hawke-Smith, describes as 'a bad attack of museum disease: too many objects, not enough space, money or staff to house and present them effectively'.
His task on appointment was to rectify the situation, to make the collections more physically and intellectually accessible without 'compromising the irreplaceable character of the existing mu-seum, its profusion of items, its eccentricity, its intimacy'.
Hawke-Smith's ambition has been achieved. And moreover, the project came in on time and on budget, despite some events that no contingency plan could have anticipated. The Chinese restaurant next door exploded in a triad arson attack - no damage.
A lorry ripped off the scaffolding trying to manoeuvre in an impossibly tight space - no casualties. The place has a will to survive. Even Porter's cottage, demolished for the new building, has a ghostly echo in the shape of the stairs and the roofline.
The cynic in me can't help but observe a pattern in HLF redevelopment projects: the staff end up with fabulous offices on the back of education and storage facilities. But why not?
The design by Freeland Rees Roberts, a local firm whose skill had already been evident in the new Trinity Hall Library, uses traditional materials in a contemporary way. The scheme is defined by the narrow site, with a wall of high windows at first-floor level giving it a slightly ecclesiastical flavour.
This is a proper bespoke building, neither deferential nor overwhelming; it fulfils the requirements of form and function in an appropriate manner. There's an expansive education space with good ground-floor access, and a store where the disorienting perspective of the triangular vanishing point has been managed by some canny roller-racking.
The refurbishment of the old building is exemplary, that is, invisible. This is a highly sophisticated achievement when the capital costs were almost double those of the new construction. Even the lift disappears into the dense, higgledy-piggledy structure without fuss.
There are new first-floor showcases and some interpretative clarification, but the whole experience for the visitor is of organic growth.
The display panels are beautifully designed in-house by Shevanthi De-Silva: they tell a story without intruding on the here-and-now experience of being in this space, surrounded by these things.
Perhaps they even make jokes, but I can't be sure. The fens are borderline, land/not land, sea/not sea, and the fenlanders' idea of a good time just adds to the attraction.
One display board tells how everyday life was cheered up by events and traditional customs such as this: 'Easter loaves were marked with a cross and kept for 12 months in the belief that it would keep the family from hunger. On Easter Sunday the following year, the loaf was moistened, re-baked and eaten.' Well, that must have been worth surviving the winter for.
Labels occur when they are needed, and old ones that have become part of the history of the object, are retained and treasured. This is my favourite: 'A Bed Bug Trap made by Professor Okey, presented in 1925 - I believe that I, having as a young man, nearly 60 years ago, worked as a basketmaker at Spitalfields, am the sole survivor of the journeyman basketmakers who made for sale the bug-traps in wicker used by our grandfathers and grandmothers.'
All of the museum is there; the connection through the generations to what is lost, the social change that saw a man moving from artisan to academic, the beauty and fascination of an individual object, the delicacy of its survival.
Okey's script reminded me of the signed labels in Tate Modern; the storyteller claims the story as particular, not necessarily universal, and we can make of it what we will.
This is potential space, which allows for thought, for the roving eye, for pleasure and spontaneity. And there's nothing ambiguous at all about my response to it. The Cambridge and County Folk Museum is great, the new building is excellent, the project is a great success.
Laura Drysdale is a writer and consultant
Project data
Cost: £1m Funding: Heritage Lottery Fund £786,000, patrons' scheme £25,000, small trusts and individuals, WREN, Cambridge City Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council, Cambridgeshire County Council
Architect: Freeland Rees Roberts, Cambridge
Construction: York Construction, Cambridge
Roller-raking: Lista UK
Judging by the comments book, the dominant feeling among those revisiting the Cambridge Folk Museum after its two-year redevelopment programme is relief.
And that's as it should be, because there are few more difficult tricks to pull off successfully than interfering with a well-loved institution without damaging its essential flavour. There's nothing easier to lose than charm.
The hand of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) can weigh exceedingly heavy on a small museum, but here the only immediate evidence of its involvement is a discrete slate plaque at the equally discrete, if not to say rather obscure, entrance.
Perhaps it doesn't compare to the mega-bucks at the Fitzwilliam, but a £786,000 grant is far from peanuts, and at a total cost of £1,044,000, this has been a major project for a museum that originated in a Pageant of Bygone Times arranged by the Federation of Women's Institutes in 1933.
The money has bought refurbishment of the listed, timber frame original building, plus the insertion of a lift and lavatories. There is also a new extension providing all the backroom services, offices, storage and an education room.
Housed in what was until 1935 the White Horse Inn, it is next door to the Kettle's Yard arts centre, in a fragment of Cambridge that was almost lost to the grandiose ambitions of the colleges to demolish any residue of the medieval vernacular that limited their expansion.
In fact, the building's survival, thanks to the Cambridge Preservation Society, makes not only the structure itself, but its history emblematic of the collections it houses.
Town versus gown, let alone men versus women, appear in the displays, where we learn that that the vice-chancellor retained his powers to send any woman found on the streets of Cambridge at night to the Spinning House, a gaol for prostitutes, until 1894.
So for almost 70 years, as the collections grew, the museum sustained its mission to tip the balance just a little bit in favour of the common objects, the everyday life of people in and around this city on the edge of the Fens.
Enid Porter took over in 1947 and ran the place single-handedly for 27 years, living beside the shop in a 1960s cottage constructed on the tight triangular site of the old inn yard.
Fast-forward to 2000, and the folk museum was suffering from what its curator, Cameron Hawke-Smith, describes as 'a bad attack of museum disease: too many objects, not enough space, money or staff to house and present them effectively'.
His task on appointment was to rectify the situation, to make the collections more physically and intellectually accessible without 'compromising the irreplaceable character of the existing mu-seum, its profusion of items, its eccentricity, its intimacy'.
Hawke-Smith's ambition has been achieved. And moreover, the project came in on time and on budget, despite some events that no contingency plan could have anticipated. The Chinese restaurant next door exploded in a triad arson attack - no damage.
A lorry ripped off the scaffolding trying to manoeuvre in an impossibly tight space - no casualties. The place has a will to survive. Even Porter's cottage, demolished for the new building, has a ghostly echo in the shape of the stairs and the roofline.
The cynic in me can't help but observe a pattern in HLF redevelopment projects: the staff end up with fabulous offices on the back of education and storage facilities. But why not?
The design by Freeland Rees Roberts, a local firm whose skill had already been evident in the new Trinity Hall Library, uses traditional materials in a contemporary way. The scheme is defined by the narrow site, with a wall of high windows at first-floor level giving it a slightly ecclesiastical flavour.
This is a proper bespoke building, neither deferential nor overwhelming; it fulfils the requirements of form and function in an appropriate manner. There's an expansive education space with good ground-floor access, and a store where the disorienting perspective of the triangular vanishing point has been managed by some canny roller-racking.
The refurbishment of the old building is exemplary, that is, invisible. This is a highly sophisticated achievement when the capital costs were almost double those of the new construction. Even the lift disappears into the dense, higgledy-piggledy structure without fuss.
There are new first-floor showcases and some interpretative clarification, but the whole experience for the visitor is of organic growth.
The display panels are beautifully designed in-house by Shevanthi De-Silva: they tell a story without intruding on the here-and-now experience of being in this space, surrounded by these things.
Perhaps they even make jokes, but I can't be sure. The fens are borderline, land/not land, sea/not sea, and the fenlanders' idea of a good time just adds to the attraction.
One display board tells how everyday life was cheered up by events and traditional customs such as this: 'Easter loaves were marked with a cross and kept for 12 months in the belief that it would keep the family from hunger. On Easter Sunday the following year, the loaf was moistened, re-baked and eaten.' Well, that must have been worth surviving the winter for.
Labels occur when they are needed, and old ones that have become part of the history of the object, are retained and treasured. This is my favourite: 'A Bed Bug Trap made by Professor Okey, presented in 1925 - I believe that I, having as a young man, nearly 60 years ago, worked as a basketmaker at Spitalfields, am the sole survivor of the journeyman basketmakers who made for sale the bug-traps in wicker used by our grandfathers and grandmothers.'
All of the museum is there; the connection through the generations to what is lost, the social change that saw a man moving from artisan to academic, the beauty and fascination of an individual object, the delicacy of its survival.
Okey's script reminded me of the signed labels in Tate Modern; the storyteller claims the story as particular, not necessarily universal, and we can make of it what we will.
This is potential space, which allows for thought, for the roving eye, for pleasure and spontaneity. And there's nothing ambiguous at all about my response to it. The Cambridge and County Folk Museum is great, the new building is excellent, the project is a great success.
Laura Drysdale is a writer and consultant
Project data
Cost: £1m Funding: Heritage Lottery Fund £786,000, patrons' scheme £25,000, small trusts and individuals, WREN, Cambridge City Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council, Cambridgeshire County Council
Architect: Freeland Rees Roberts, Cambridge
Construction: York Construction, Cambridge
Roller-raking: Lista UK
