On arrival, visitors to Wiltshire Museum’s Prehistoric Galleries are left in no doubt that these are the jewel, or rather the precious metal, in the museum’s crown – objects from the displays grace the cover of the museum plan and staff proudly offer unsolicited advice on how to find them.
Sitting midway between the great prehistoric stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury, the museum is ideally placed to tell the story of Neolithic and Bronze Age Wiltshire and its people.
The galleries occupy four rooms at the heart of the museum – as a first-time visitor I found navigating the rooms, which are on two different levels, a little tricky and had to re-trace my steps a few times to make sure I was following the overarching narrative.
Overcoming the spatial challenges and limitations of the Grade II-listed building – early Georgian town houses connected by a Victorian infill – can’t have been easy. However, lots of effort has been made to help visitors physically and intellectually orientate themselves.
The first room provides a brief introduction and a simple timeline, footprints on the floor connect the different rooms, and each section of the galleries has a large, highly visual graphic wall that clearly sets out the theme and time period to be explored.
I liked the way the introduction to the galleries puts the emphasis on “people who have lived in Wiltshire for thousands of years”, rather than, for example, the topography of the area. However, I felt that the galleries could have been more “peopled”.
Despite the many human stories told through text and film, and the fact that many of the items on display relate to human burials, objects and the landscape in which they were found tend to dominate the overall look and feel of the spaces.
Connection to the past
People are represented, for example, through illustrations on graphic panels and backdrops to display cases, but they could be more visually prominent and do more to encourage visitors to engage emotionally on a human level with the periods covered.
Perhaps more could have been done with projections or larger-scale graphics to suggest the presence of prehistoric people. These are used to good effect on the doors to two of the rooms that feature silhouettes of a man and woman.
The materials and colour palette used in the galleries successfully create a feeling of connection with the natural world and the distant past. However, I felt that the lack of ambient sounds, for example of wind, rain, birdsong or people at work, was a missed opportunity to provide additional atmosphere and to enrich the sense of time, place and human activity.
The collection is undoubtedly the star of the show. The largest collection of Early Bronze Age gold ever exhibited in England is simply stunning.
Objects such as flint handaxes and arrowheads, pebble maceheads, jade axes, decorated ceramic bowls and beakers, bone beads, bronze daggers and gold ear-rings, necklaces and pendants, are traditionally but beautifully displayed, allowing their quality to shine through.
Bush Barrow burial
The precious objects found with a woman buried in a barrow near Upton Lovell, including 11 drum-shaped beads and a gold plaque less than 0.1mm thick, are remarkable.
But the objects that make the biggest impression are those found with the Bush Barrow chieftain, who was given Britain’s richest Bronze Age burial overlooking Stonehenge.
These include a spectacular gold lozenge (so significant that it forms part of the museum’s logo) that would have been used to fasten his cloak, and a bronze dagger adorned with thousands of tiny gold studs.
Graphic panels carry the galleries’ main narrative and put the objects in context effectively. I found them a bit too wordy, although the text hierarchy, accessible language and supporting photographs and illustrations ensure they are engaging for visitors with different levels of knowledge and interest.
Object captions are commendably concise, elegantly designed and well lit. The choice of font, point size and contrast between text and background, and careful lighting, ensure that text is easy to read.
Strategically placed audiovisuals provide useful contextual information for visitors who want it.
These include an introductory projection in the first room, which I thought would benefit from more space and a soundtrack, and touchscreen monitors showing a selection of short films, several presented by archaeologist Phil Harding from the television programme Time Team.
The galleries feature two walk-in reconstructions – the burial chamber of a long barrow and a Bronze Age roundhouse, that offer visitors the chance to imagine what life, and death, might have been like for people living in prehistoric Wiltshire.
These are well done but feel constrained by the rooms’ limited space and low ceiling height.
There are also lots of opportunities for low-tech interaction. For example, visitors can identify objects in feely boxes; use foam shapes to build their own Stonehenge (or “Foamhenge”); use a simple microscope to examine an insect trapped in amber, grains of wheat, a tiny gold pin and ripples on a piece of flint; complete a broken beaker jigsaw; dress up as Bronze Age people; and create a pattern inspired by the gold studs on the Bush Barrow chieftain’s dagger.
Children can also follow Archie the earthworm and Ollie the mole’s prehistoric trail by stamping a card as they discover key objects around the galleries.
While the Prehistoric Wiltshire galleries may not be breaking new ground from an interpretive point of view, they are engaging and accessible, and are particularly impressive in the way they offer rich experiences for different audiences and cater for various learning styles.
They are an inspirational learning resource for primary schools studying prehistoric Britain for the first time under the new national curriculum, and will be equally well received by connoisseurs of archaeology, tourists and families.
The galleries have clearly transformed the museum and are a fitting home for such an important collection, much of which is on permanent display for the first time.
Frazer Swift is the head of learning at the Museum of London and an associate tutor at the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester
Sitting midway between the great prehistoric stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury, the museum is ideally placed to tell the story of Neolithic and Bronze Age Wiltshire and its people.
The galleries occupy four rooms at the heart of the museum – as a first-time visitor I found navigating the rooms, which are on two different levels, a little tricky and had to re-trace my steps a few times to make sure I was following the overarching narrative.
Overcoming the spatial challenges and limitations of the Grade II-listed building – early Georgian town houses connected by a Victorian infill – can’t have been easy. However, lots of effort has been made to help visitors physically and intellectually orientate themselves.
The first room provides a brief introduction and a simple timeline, footprints on the floor connect the different rooms, and each section of the galleries has a large, highly visual graphic wall that clearly sets out the theme and time period to be explored.
I liked the way the introduction to the galleries puts the emphasis on “people who have lived in Wiltshire for thousands of years”, rather than, for example, the topography of the area. However, I felt that the galleries could have been more “peopled”.
Despite the many human stories told through text and film, and the fact that many of the items on display relate to human burials, objects and the landscape in which they were found tend to dominate the overall look and feel of the spaces.
Connection to the past
People are represented, for example, through illustrations on graphic panels and backdrops to display cases, but they could be more visually prominent and do more to encourage visitors to engage emotionally on a human level with the periods covered.
Perhaps more could have been done with projections or larger-scale graphics to suggest the presence of prehistoric people. These are used to good effect on the doors to two of the rooms that feature silhouettes of a man and woman.
The materials and colour palette used in the galleries successfully create a feeling of connection with the natural world and the distant past. However, I felt that the lack of ambient sounds, for example of wind, rain, birdsong or people at work, was a missed opportunity to provide additional atmosphere and to enrich the sense of time, place and human activity.
The collection is undoubtedly the star of the show. The largest collection of Early Bronze Age gold ever exhibited in England is simply stunning.
Objects such as flint handaxes and arrowheads, pebble maceheads, jade axes, decorated ceramic bowls and beakers, bone beads, bronze daggers and gold ear-rings, necklaces and pendants, are traditionally but beautifully displayed, allowing their quality to shine through.
Bush Barrow burial
The precious objects found with a woman buried in a barrow near Upton Lovell, including 11 drum-shaped beads and a gold plaque less than 0.1mm thick, are remarkable.
But the objects that make the biggest impression are those found with the Bush Barrow chieftain, who was given Britain’s richest Bronze Age burial overlooking Stonehenge.
These include a spectacular gold lozenge (so significant that it forms part of the museum’s logo) that would have been used to fasten his cloak, and a bronze dagger adorned with thousands of tiny gold studs.
Graphic panels carry the galleries’ main narrative and put the objects in context effectively. I found them a bit too wordy, although the text hierarchy, accessible language and supporting photographs and illustrations ensure they are engaging for visitors with different levels of knowledge and interest.
Object captions are commendably concise, elegantly designed and well lit. The choice of font, point size and contrast between text and background, and careful lighting, ensure that text is easy to read.
Strategically placed audiovisuals provide useful contextual information for visitors who want it.
These include an introductory projection in the first room, which I thought would benefit from more space and a soundtrack, and touchscreen monitors showing a selection of short films, several presented by archaeologist Phil Harding from the television programme Time Team.
The galleries feature two walk-in reconstructions – the burial chamber of a long barrow and a Bronze Age roundhouse, that offer visitors the chance to imagine what life, and death, might have been like for people living in prehistoric Wiltshire.
These are well done but feel constrained by the rooms’ limited space and low ceiling height.
There are also lots of opportunities for low-tech interaction. For example, visitors can identify objects in feely boxes; use foam shapes to build their own Stonehenge (or “Foamhenge”); use a simple microscope to examine an insect trapped in amber, grains of wheat, a tiny gold pin and ripples on a piece of flint; complete a broken beaker jigsaw; dress up as Bronze Age people; and create a pattern inspired by the gold studs on the Bush Barrow chieftain’s dagger.
Children can also follow Archie the earthworm and Ollie the mole’s prehistoric trail by stamping a card as they discover key objects around the galleries.
While the Prehistoric Wiltshire galleries may not be breaking new ground from an interpretive point of view, they are engaging and accessible, and are particularly impressive in the way they offer rich experiences for different audiences and cater for various learning styles.
They are an inspirational learning resource for primary schools studying prehistoric Britain for the first time under the new national curriculum, and will be equally well received by connoisseurs of archaeology, tourists and families.
The galleries have clearly transformed the museum and are a fitting home for such an important collection, much of which is on permanent display for the first time.
Frazer Swift is the head of learning at the Museum of London and an associate tutor at the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester
Project data
- Cost £530,000
- Main funders Heritage Lottery Fund £370,000; English Heritage £100,000; North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Leader Programme £19,000; Plain Action Leader Programme £10,000; Wiltshire Council, Devizes Area Board £5,000; private donations and legacies £26,000
- Design and concept Chris Hudson Designs
- Exhibition installation Beaufort Bespoke; Enlightened Lighting
- Display cases Meyvaert Glass Engineering
- Graphic design Surface3
- Graphic production Colour Studios
- Reconstructions Robert Farrow Workshop
- Illustrators Kelvin Wilson; Gobblynne Animation; Peter Lorimer
- Structural Dolman & Sons; Gaiger Brothers
- Audiences Anne Millman Associates; Stuart Davies Associates
