BOYS’ VILLAGE MUSEUM

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 21 February 1931, Page 10

BOYS’ VILLAGE MUSEUM

A discovery of considerable archaeological importance has followed the founIdation of a village museum, at Ashwcll, in Cambridgeshire. Thd museum was the idea of two local boys, J. M. Bray, and A. W. Shelldriclc, who, by collecting antiquities, from the villagers and conducting excavations, succeeded in tracing something of the do mestia and .agricultural, and at one time industrial, history of tho anciont village from Roman times. As the collection outgrew the old barn in which the boys originally housed it, they managed to buy a condemned cottago for £25. Then the real romance of tho venture started. The fall of a pieco of tho ceiling exposed a king-post roof. The lads, their curiosity stimulated by the important and unexpected discovery, stripped the walls of plaster, and laid bare an almost perfect specimen of n fourteenth century cottage. Sir William Gentle, an ‘ex-Chief Constable of Brighton, hearing of tho boys’ enterprise gave them £3OO to have the cottago renovated and repay them the purchase money. The cottage now looks much as it did 600 years ago. while evidences of the long history of Ashwoll are displayed on tables. Among the village museum's most treasured pieces are coins of Hadrian and hjero, pieces of Roman pottery, a .fifteenth century fresco and an ancient llinl lock gun. Flails and ploughshares Bare agricultural development through Ihe years. There is a metal harvest horn many hundred years old. Tt was used ,In call the Asiiwell harvesters to the fields at d a.in. with notes like those of a modern hunting horn. Ash well's brief industrial history is represented by various implements and moulds used in the manufacture of straw hats. everything in the museum has come from the immediate vicinity. Only objnls collected within a. radius of a few miles and having a. definite historic in•'Iciest will he admitted to the unique - village i elicit ion.