OPP Day 5: Stonehenge and Fishbourne Roman Palace
We said an sleepy goodbye to beautiful Bath and our beautiful townhouse as we departed early to head to our next destination— Brighton. Though it was primarily a travel day, we made two stops along the way to beachy Brighton.
Part 1: Our first stop of the day was Stonehenge. I was excited to visit because the only other time I had been to Stonehenge it was raining quite a bit and the visitor center was under construction. It was so nice to see it without feeling drenched and soggy, and I must say that I am very impressed with the new visitor center. I feel like the visitor center does an excellent job at contextualizing Stonehenge and the land. Right now it seems like the visitor center is not high on most people’s radars— most seem to arrive at the site, jump directly on the trams to see Stonehenge, and then head back for the cafe and gift shop, and then maaaaaybe stop by the visitor center if there’s time.
But it’s cool!
There are many archeological treasures to see, and an opportunity to learn more about the people who inhabited that part of England, and interpretations of Stonehenge and early religion and culture. So if you do go to Stonehenge, do make sure to stop for the Visitor Center.
Part 2: Next stop: Fishbourne Royal Palace! Holding on to the themes of Bath just a little longer, we visited this amazing Roman palace site with active archeological work happening throughout the year. The museum on site is now run by the Sussex Archeological Society. Here we were treated to a Q and A session with three members of staff from the administration, education, and curatorial departments. It was interesting to learn about how the education department works so closely with curatorial at this museum, since so much of their work is centered around school groups. In fact, they have classrooms used by a small independent school on grounds.
What I found most interesting about the discussion of designing educational programs was how passionate the collections staff was about providing tactile opportunities for children. The curator/collections manager said that children really do learn best when feeling real, solid history in their hands, and keeping items tucked away in storage indefinitely wasn’t serving anyone well.
The collections staff has countless fragments from archeological digs at Fishbourne and through the Sussex region. They do select pieces that are represented elsewhere in the collection, and hand them over to educational for use in their education collection. These real artifacts get handed over under full understanding that they will be touched, tossed, smushed about, and in all honestly licked by several children. And that’s ok. Collections hands these objects over knowing they are not going back into collections. Ever. And the children benefit so much from this.
Likewise, we were told about the museum’s policy on assigning (again “repeat”) objects for architectural studies, which include grinding them down to fine particles for research. Some gasped at the idea of effective destroying artifacts like this, but we were reminded that as an educational inistution, museums must find a balace between preservation and access and enable learning and growth. Sometimes that involves being okay with saying good bye to a bone fragment… especially if you have 8,000 more of that same kind of bone.
I think this discussion was a reminder of the power of tangible history, and the responsibility of museums to serve as a center for education and learning. Making objects accessible, especially for tactile learning, can be such a valuable experience, and the cost to collections is quite minimal in this case. Same with the research provisions— knowledge gained from these investigations could prove invaluable, and the museum, as keeper of that history, should share in the responsibility of growing the knowledge base of that regions archeological past.
Brighton by Night: So I just have to say, upon my initial arrival in Brighton— it’s got a nope from me. Not a fan, would not recommend. We stayed in a beautiful old Victorian hotel directly at the beach. But… ok. Maybe I’m old. But we arrived on a Friday evening, there was a high school prom happening directly across from my room in the hotel’s event center. This is a hotel management issue— put the people going to parties in the rooms where the party is held. Otherwise you’ll have a bunch of crabby guests complaining at 11pm because they can’t sleep because 100 teenagers are singing YMCA at the top of their lungs. So here’s my advice, for anyone traveling to Brighton, especially future OPPers reading this-- take earplugs. Good ear plugs. Also generally not a fan of the entirely crazy atmosphere outside deep into the night. It just felt like there was not a single spot to go for any kind of quiet moment by yourself because of all the bachelor/ette parties and college weekends happening. The city just smelled like that dirty dive bar nearest your college campus that everyone ended up at when they really should have just gone home. Alright, that’s my Friday night Brighton rant. I promise it has its lovely points too. You just have to make it through the night of screaming teenagers to get to them.