Whole town helped to make the new Lyttelton Museum

Press, 23 February 1980, Page 16

Whole town helped to make the new Lyttelton Museum

By

BILL KREGER

After months of strenuous work by members of the Lyttelton Historic Museum Society, volunteers, watersiders, harbour board employees, and, especially, student community service workers, the new Lyttelton Historic Museum will open on Saturday, February 23. The new museum, with its four galleries, replaces the meagre twO-room display at the community centre in Voelas Road.

Now fully set up in the refurbished and completely repainted former Canterbury Merchant Sailors’ Centre at the east end of Norwich Quay, the museum contains thousands

of items relating to both the maritime history of the port and the community which grew around it. Twelve years ago the museum’s curator (Mr B. N. Norris) was not really thinking of a museum when he approached the borough council seeking a place where irreplaceable artefacts could be stored. A room was provided in the community centre, followed by a second, which soon became a mini-mu-seum instead of mere storage space. But as the collection grew it became apparent that, if Lyttelton were to have a proper museum, a new and larger site would be needed.

The society was able to lease the sailors’ centre, built in 1911, from the Borough Council and work began in earnest. Not only was painting, the construction of display cases, and the arranging of displays involved; the student workers also undertook the massive job of cataloguing the many thousands of items collected over the last 12

years from hundreds of sources.

Financing of the new museum was made pos- ■ sible by money which the '. society had accumulated over the years, a $7000',? grant by the Lyttelton Round Table, other dona- ' tions, and offers of money, labour, and materials by the Watersiders’ '■■■ Union and the Lyttelton Harbour Board. The oldest items in the museum’s collection are undoubtedly fossils which L form part of a geological " display. Next oldest is probably a survey map of /; Port Victoria drawn in 1850. Other items include a cannon ’ ” from the Ocean Mail'"

which sank off the Chat-’.' ham Islands in 1877, and a beautiful sideboard from the barque May Queen " which was wrecked when ' she went aground onrocks on the south side of Lyttelton Harbour in 1888.

In addition to the display rooms, the seamen’s chapel in which many services were, held over the past 69 years has been retained as it was originally built.

The maritime ■ gallery contains many interesting items from ship models to old uniforms, pictures, ships’ fittings, and old rocket pistols. In the main gallery is a 1924 model of the port and hundreds of other items including clothing from the turn of the century and before.

There is also gallery for r special displays and a sep- , : -> arate Antarctic Gallerjc The society has retained . - a full-time caretaker who .J will live on the premises. ■ To start with the museum will be open to the public . from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sunday's.