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Letters in Lockdown – a series of bulletins written during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic by Museums Officer, Joanne Turner for our dispersed museum volunteers and staff. Part 8: 6 January – 3 February 2021
6 January
Happy New Year to you! Let’s hope so.
When I wrote to you last Wednesday I didn’t anticipate that I’d be writing to you from a new lockdown scenario this week, but here we are. Managers told us last Thursday that we should not travel into work yesterday so, as last time, Dumfries and Galloway Council was ahead of the national lockdown announcement. Lydia was on duty on New Years Eve so it gave her the chance to collect all her work and equipment in order to work at home. I, on the other hand will have to nip into the office either today or tomorrow to collect the files and paperwork I need.
In the winter of course, there are fewer front of house colleagues around, but as before, we have a timetable set up for them to monitor and look after all our buildings during the museum closures and lockdown. They are responding to callouts and can give access to contractors. Me, Fiona, Lydia are at home, and Vivienne is planning to be based as normal in the office. We are of course already missing Siobhan’s direction, but Rebecca (our Principal Officer for Arts and Museums) is being supportive of our endeavours. We have been approached by other Council departments to undertake different work during the lockdown – so it may be that once more, some of the museums service staff are deployed to other duties.
The main difference between this lockdown and the last is that it has come alongside the roll out of the new vaccines. Everyone I have spoken to seems to know someone who has either had or is about to have their first jab. This is great news and cause for some optimism to start the new year – I hope you feel that way too. The vaccine information leaflet dropped through (I assume) everyone’s letterbox in Scotland yesterday gives us a good idea of what is involved.
Meanwhile, we still have the January weather to contend with. Carolyn has sent me a couple of photographs this morning of Frank and Callum from the Council’s Streetscene. She says they have been a huge help with path gritting - making sure the gardens at Dumfries Museum are safe for pedestrians on their daily walks.
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Fiona picked up the results of our recent online visitor satisfaction survey today. It is helpful to get some feedback on what we have been doing, although we had a lower number of visitors to our two open venues in December. There are some very encouraging comments regarding our welcoming and friendly staff - and the safety measures we have in place – plus some useful suggestions for future work. When we are allowed to re-open, I think it will be a more straight forward task than last time as so much has already been prepared.
The lovely sunshine (just like March and April last year) has been a welcome treat these past couple of weeks, despite the cold temperatures. Lydia had a walk along Powillimount beach – just beyond the John Paul Jones Birthplace Museum recently and sent me these photographs of the frozen rockpools.
They reminded me I’d not seen snow on a beach before, until late March 2013 when exceptional snowfall came - we also had snowdrifts still on the sides of some roads at Easter that year too.
Thank you to everyone who sent us seasonal greetings before Christmas – they were much appreciated. We received some kind messages from some of our customers and supporters as well. Here’s one from Italy – from Callisto in Cantu. He usually organises an Italian student visit to Dumfries each summer.
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It’s a while since we have heard from the Moffat sheep – here they were at Christmastime.
Fiona has also sent me an image of Phil having his Christmas dinner and some lovely images of the frost in her garden, where the winter produce is still growing strong.
Yesterday afternoon, my husband climbed into our attic to retrieve my old computer desk from my days when I lived in Primrose Street (it was so convenient to live next to the museum!). We’ve assembled it in our spare room - so I can work in there and he can have his office space back at last. He spent the last lockdown working outside on the garden, but it’s too cold for him to do that this time around, so we needed to have a re-think. It must be such a challenge for larger family households at this time.
Finally, the otter family on the River Nith has made another appearance near the Whitesands – I have seen several lovely images of them shared on social media in the last week. I’m hoping that someone out for their daily exercise will send me some of their otter images to share with you….
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13 January
As I’d hoped, I have received some photographs of the otters! While Siobhan reported that she had seen them on Boxing Day the weather was awful for photography. However, Derek saw them at the weekend and sent me these images.
Derek says they have appeared on the River Nith several times recently, and put on quite a show for their fans. On Saturday, many people had gathered to follow them along the river. Social distancing was a challenge with all the excitement, so he didn’t linger for too long. Derek comments: it was great to see people getting so much pleasure from nature in otherwise gloomy times. The otters weren’t at all bothered by their audience and seemed almost as curious of us as we were of them.
Tom has updated me on how he got on at Sanquhar Tolbooth Museum yesterday: I spent the morning at Sanquhar doing all the checks, winding the clock and taking down the flag - which was an experience. As one of the designated Council buildings, the flag had been hoisted for the Duchess of Cambridge’s birthday at the weekend. It was minus two degrees in Sanquhar so the flag had frozen to the pole and the rope was rigid with the ice! It was a bit of a struggle, but with determination I managed to coax it down - and left it to defrost. I’ll be hoisting it again on Monday in time for the Countess of Wessex’s birthday!
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Christine has sent me a couple of lovely sunny photographs from one of her walks along the River Annan.
The images show downstream and upstream with the old clapper bridge, at the Howes Pool.
They remind me of this George Wright painting in our Annan Museum collection entitled “Old Mill Race” depicting the scene in 1887 further upstream.
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Christine went on to explain the origins of the name “clapper bridge” – it refers to a simple form of stone bridge - stone slabs are laid across a series of rocks or piles of stones. I’d not heard of this before so looked it up on CANMORE (the online National Record of the Historic Environment) and apparently it is a widely used term. There are 37 ancient clapper bridges listed on CANMORE – mostly in the Highlands – but only one listed in Dumfries and Galloway (in Wigtownshire).
Derek also sent me a wintery looking photo (this one dates back to December before the current restrictions came into place).
He says: Before lockdown I went in search of the communion stones at Glenkiln. After plodding through knee deep snowdrifts in places I did eventually get there. The inscription on the monument says that 3,000 Covenanters gathered there on a summers evening in 1678 to attend a sermon, although I can’t imagine how they gathered in such numbers without being noticed.
I looked this up on CANMORE as well. (https://canmore.org.uk/) and found an aerial image of the site which shows the feature (rows of stones) next to the Victorian built monument, in clearer detail. They were described in the 19th century as "Communion Stones" - located in a secluded hollow in the moorland at the North end of Skeoch Hill. There were four distinct rows of flattish stones, on which the people are believed to have sat for worship.
We have been keeping in touch with our museum partners and collaborators as best we can – trying to continue our work with them. The Stove Network has a few ongoing projects in and around Dumfries. It was unfortunate that their “Zen Garden” project and “Tower of Light” (ie our Observatory tower) installation event could not go ahead as planned last week – but there’s hope they can happen soon. Meanwhile here’s word of a new publication from the Crichton Writers -
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‘Lovely Nelly’ - a ship of hope - inspired by our local history. We asked Vivien to tell us more about the project:
In the autumn of 2019 I gave a writing workshop on creative non-fiction to the Crichton Writers as part of their regular programme. I had taken the boarding lists for the Snow Class brig, Lovely Nelly, who sailed from the Solway to St John’s Island, Nova Scotia in the late 18th century, carrying 150 Scottish emigrants. looking for a new life. The notion was that the factual details in the records might stimulate imagination and lead to some interesting creative work. Our two hour session left the participants eager for more and their early work suggested real engagement with the project.
Wigtown Book Festival agreed to finance two workshops and pay the publication costs of any resulting book. Dumfries Museum, as ever, were generous with a welcoming meeting space in their Windmill Hill building. I am always keen to site workshops in museums or historic properties, I find the proximity of artefacts that date from the time we intend to study extremely stimulating, and this proved to be so with this project. In the end there were fifteen participants, many of them writers with little or no published works to their credit, but what they had in common was enthusiasm and application.
For the workshops I assembled those boarding lists and other contemporary resources, principally the detailed account of a court case, heard in Dumfries, that helped us piece together the two voyages of Lovely Nelly and her passengers while tracking the financial dispute between the ship owners and the factor. This was written and freely shared by historian Frances Wilkins, by the end of the second workshop there was more than enough material for the book, so we set about editing the content.
Then came Covid 19. Printer closed, further workshops cancelled, the Book Festival went online and our book was posted there, but I was keen that we would provide hard copies at the very least for the Festival Bookshop, the Museum and the participants. I received permission to print in December 2020 and the resulting book can be seen at Dumfries Museum when it re-opens in 2021.
That’s all my news for this week.
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20 January
Last week, Carolyn sent me this snap of Mary the heating engineer who has upgraded our heating system controls in the basement of Dumfries Museum.
I knew the heating was working properly again when I saw Vivienne at one of our regular online team meetings without her scarf on!
We have readvertised the Sanquhar Tolbooth Museum attendant post with a closing date of 5 February. Hopefully more people will consider applying now that we are into the new year. Shortlisting of the seasonal post applications is currently underway.
Yesterday’s announcement that Scotland will continue with the current lockdown restrictions until February will not have come as a surprise to many. The overall statistics are worrying, but small improvements are being made. This time around, the vaccination programme is in full swing – I know some of you have already been invited to the Queen of the South’s Palmerston Arena for your jab (should I say jag?) – and others I know have appointments at the Loreburn Hall (the old Dumfries Drill Hall). I think that the Victoria Halls beside Annan Museum are also being considered as a possible vaccination centre.
Now that we are back into a lockdown situation with staff either lone working, working at home, home schooling or undertaking key work, Dumfries and Galloway Council (as it usually does in January anyway) is asking everyone to think about their mental health and wellbeing. You may have seen the Scottish Government’s colourful “Clear Your Head” campaign online or on television:
The charity mind has straightforward (no cartoons) guidance on its website here: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/coronavirus/
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Meanwhile, here is a short summary taken from the NHS Dumfries and Galloway website:
https://www.nhsdg.co.uk/mental-health-and-wellbeing/
Now that I am back into working at home, I’ve started to go out for my allowed daily exercise in my lunch hour. Just a quick walk, but it means I see some daylight during these weeks of winter. As some of you know, I’m not one for going on walks just for the sake of it – and during the last lockdown, I was hardly away from our house/garden for weeks at a time. However, this time around, I am trying a bit harder to keep well. We took a walk through Terregles and up The Glen on Sunday and came across our first snowdrops of the year. These were on the roadside by a stream and they are just starting to come out. I’ll have to go back and see how they are getting on.
Fiona has been busy with our online provision in the past few days she told me:
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It’s a sign of the times that our simple question on the Dumfries Museum Facebook page about home schooling elicited a huge response. “Do your home school topics for January include Robert Burns, his songs and poetry?” we asked – and included links to virtual tours of Burns related venues, and links to online resources that the Museums Service contributes to. The post was shared over 100 times and has so far reached over 38,000 people (and counting). These virtual tours are almost 10 years old now and some of the displays have changed, but they do still give a realistic impression of places connected to Burns.
If you want to take a look at them, you can find them at http://www.burnsscotland.com/venues/360-degree-tours.aspx. More suggestions are now coming in from parents looking for local knowledge on other schools topics – next up, “Dumfries links with the Titanic”.
Of course, January is one of the busiest times in our museum calendar. We are normally visited by many local school children cheerfully learning about Robert Burns, his life, poetry and song. Numerous Burns Suppers and Burns Night events (including the Big Burns Supper festival) are happening online this year. I asked our museum attendants who usually work at our Robert Burns related venues, for their reflections on this time of year. Here’s Angela:
Life as a Museum Attendant at The Robert Burns Centre, during normal times, provides the opportunity to meet visitors from all walks of life and many parts of the world. From speaking to visitors over time it is apparent that everyone has their own reasons for visiting and that Burns means different things to different people. As "Burns Night" comes around again I am reminded of a small group of nursery children who along with their teacher visited the Burns Centre Exhibition a number of years ago as part of their "Burns Night" celebrations. Their teacher had created an activity sheet filled with photographs of artefacts in the exhibition and as the children
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explored the museum their task was to match the pictures on their sheet to the artefacts on display. For ones so young they took much pleasure in completing their task and when it was time for them to go it was clear how much fun their visit had been. On leaving they were filled with excitement at the prospect of the "Burns Supper" which awaited them on their return to their Nursery.
And this is Jan’s account:
I only started full time at the Robert Burns Centre in December 2018 and have experienced a mere two Januarys in post here. 2019 was a Friday and very quiet. In contrast, 2020 on a Saturday, was a riot! The Centre was fuller than I’ve ever seen it, just a surging mass all day. Admittedly, we had three film showings, all sold out, two “Cats”, and in between, the sing-along version of “Calamity Jane”. The auditorium rocked as a capacity crowd belted out ‘The Deadwood Stage’ amongst two hours of musical mayhem. Meanwhile the lassies at the new Jaggy Thistle cafe had gone for a ‘soft’ opening without any fanfare and were unexpectedly swamped. They ran out of food mid-afternoon and closed earlier than anticipated. It was brilliant. I suspect Rab would have loved it.
I’ve already eaten the haggis I’d bought in, but whatever way you are planning to toast the Bard next Monday, I wish you “good health”!
27 January
Bulletin number 45 this morning - I never expected to reach this number when we first started out!
I opened the curtains today to a very foggy Dumfries. Quite a change from the lovely blue skies and blankets of white frost we have experienced recently. I tried to take some photographs, but my camera phone switches itself off in protest of these cold temperatures! These ones were taken by my sister near Gretna Green last weekend.
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Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, a national commemoration day marked in the UK since 2001. The date, 27 January was chosen because it is the anniversary of the liberation in 1945 of Auschwitz- Birkenau, the largest death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Each year local schoolchildren usually gather in Dunscore to remember Jane Haining in particular. Born at Lochanhead farm, near Dunscore on 6 June 1897, Miss Haining became a missionary for the Church of Scotland. From June 1932 she was matron of a girls school boarding house in Budapest. She refused to abandon the Jewish girls in her care, many of them orphans, when the Second World War broke out. She sheltered them until she was arrested in 1944. She was eventually taken to Auschwitz where she died at the age of 47, six months before the liberation.
The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s theme this year is “be the light in the darkness” encouraging everyone to reflect on the depths humanity can sink to, but also the ways individuals and communities can resist that darkness and ‘be the light’.
Did you see the local clip on ITV Border news last friday? It was about a recently published Report into the effect (and potential) of Robert Burns on our local economy. Hopefully there will be plans drawn up to encourage more visitors (“literary tourists”?) into our area in the coming few years. Jan took this photograph of reporter Bruce McKenzie (centre) when he came along to the Robert Burns Centre to interview our local Councillor Andy Fergusson (Chair of the Communities Committee) on the topic.
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It was a busy weekend for all things Robert Burns related on television and online - to mark his 262nd birthday on 25th January. The annual wreath laying ceremonies could not happen this year – although Provost Tracy Little placed a wreath at Robert Burns statue, and Carolyn reports that a wreath from the Dumfries Burns Club was left at the Mausoleum. Here is an image from Dumfries Museum’s photograph collection recorded as January c1905.
I recognise the lady in the big hat as Miss Jean Armour Burns Brown – the great granddaughter of the Poet. Her parents Jane Emma Burns and Thomas Brown lived in Robert Burns House as caretakers at the time, admitting visitors to see the display of Burns relics in one of the upstairs rooms. Mr Brown is the gentleman with the big beard – just to the left of the notice board.
On Monday Jan captured our Robert Burns with the remote control and a wee dram of fine malt (Scapa Flow Glansa from Orkney) ready for the birthday celebrations.
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Meanwhile, Carolyn set some (battery operated) candles out at Burns Mausoleum.
Thanks to Derek for agreeing to help out as well. He says:
Fiona asked me to take a picture of Burns Mausoleum lit with the candles for our social media pages. I hadn't appreciated how much later it is getting dark already - so arrived in the graveyard far too early in a temperature which my camera bag thermometer said was already below freezing. By the time it was dark enough for the candlelight to show there wasn't enough light to focus the camera and I couldn't feel my fingers or toes! When I downloaded them at home only four of the images were worth keeping, but I think the result was worth the suffering.
Of course, many activities went online this year, including the annual Big Burns Supper now in its 10th year. Their publicity indicates that the event and subsequent views on YouTube reached more than 326,000 people in over 50 different countries, in the first 12 hours of broadcast. It included some footage filmed from outside Robert Burns House and The Mausoleum, as well as Ellisland Farm - in a sequence for the local singing group, LOKA.
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Do you recall the photographs of the twin baby boys Fiona shared with us last year? Well, they are one year old on Sunday! Sadly, no birthday party to go to, but Fiona has despatched this lovely card to them.
Fiona must have had a busy weekend as she also sent me some photographs of what happened to these:
Apparently it is marmalade time - the best marmalade is made from the small bitter Seville orange which has a very short season. The Spanish fruit is available from mid-January and is at its best for the following four weeks. Here’s some of the labour-intensive process:
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Now we know why Fiona sometimes asks us to save our glass jars for her!
On that colourful note, I will finish off. I think I’ll have toast for lunch!
3 February
It’s February already, and with it came confirmation that Scotland’s lockdown will continue through this month as well. However, it feels like there was a glimmer of good news yesterday with the suggestion that Scottish schools may start to reopen towards the end of February. Coupled with the proposal to regularly test teachers and other staff for the virus, this feels like progress is being made? The headlines suggest that the vaccination program in Scotland is lagging behind – but the good news being reported for Dumfries and Galloway is that we are currently ahead of schedule, with the over 65s now being lined up for their jab as well. Of course, there is a large proportion of people in this category level in D&G so a lot of people to reach before they move on to younger groups.
It was sad to hear yesterday that Captain Sir Tom Moore has died. This is one of the items I will be adding to our museum collection as part of our record of the first lockdown (Derek had it sent to his home address for us).
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Carolyn circulated some family photographs to her colleagues recently. We got an insight into what it’s like for a mum of three home schooling and trying to get her own job done at the same time.
This lovely photograph in particular shows Carolyn’s three grandsons at home with their mum – they look so happy!
By now, I think the whole of the museum team has been considered for re-deployment. Most of us have received phone calls from HR and been matched with tasks for the Council’s Business Gateway. Paul has already started processing business grant applications full time, and Fiona, Jan, Lydia and I received some introductory training for it last Friday. Hopefully we will be able to keep up with our museum duties alongside this. If these bulletins start to look a bit sketchy, you’ll know why!
Meanwhile, Vivienne, Fiona and I have worked through the applications for our seasonal attendant posts and drawn up a shortlist for interviews. We are having to make several adjustments to what we would normally do – including revised shift patterns and interviewing online - yet another new experience for us!
One of our temporary exhibitions planned for Dumfries Museum last year was to showcase the conservation work that the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Textile Conservation has been undertaking over the last few years. Tutors visited and reviewed our textile store – looking for items to borrow from us that would be suitable for post-graduate students to work on. As you know, some of the items they have studied are now on display in the balcony case.
It is good that we can work with the University and support their conservation students – and in return have the opportunity to care for
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some of our objects in an affordable way. Currently, the students are finding new ways of studying, Lydia explains:
Last Autumn we were asked by tutors at the Centre for Textile Conservation if we would make a video tour of our display and storage areas at Dumfries Museum for their current second year students. They usually visit a museum to gather information for a report on how to make collections more accessible and how to care for and store them appropriately. Initially, we expected to be in the museum, but due to the new lockdown Fiona and I had to try and do this from home! We produced a PowerPoint presentation with photos of our display areas and Textile Store, as well as images from past events relating to textiles. We gathered yesterday via zoom and once I had presented the slides to the students, we had a Q&A session. It was interesting to hear a bit about each of the seven students - their backgrounds and how they had ended up at the CTC. They are a very international group, coming from the UK, USA, Canada, Iceland, Denmark and China and were a lovely group of students. It was nice to put faces to names as we have had email correspondence with quite a few of them whilst they have treated some of our objects. They asked about volunteers, loans boxes, pest monitoring, how easy it is to find things in the store and how we are getting on with Adlib! They wanted to know the career paths we had followed to our current jobs which gave us an opportunity to ask them what had inspired them to study textile conservation. Fiona and I both felt that this was a really interesting and engaging session and we hope that the students got all the information they needed for their reports.
Fiona has also invited the students to write an article for our website. Here’s a preview of the object they chose to write about.
As you can see, it is a World War One Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse’s uniform. I have only ever known it creased flat in its box – so it is great to get it treated and on a stand.
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Did any of you do the RSPB’s annual garden bird survey at the weekend? I wonder how it will compare to last year. We don’t put food out in our garden – but it doesn’t stop birds living in it. We have lots of bushes with berries, and insects hiding – and no pets to chase the birds away! I have a wren, a blackbird and a robin that keep me company most days (now that I have a window beside my desk) and a large woodpecker put in an appearance one day as well! I’ve not got close enough to take photos, but here’s a snap of the geese going by in the blue skies of last week.
I noticed that some of you attended the Antiquarian Society’s zoom meeting last Friday night. Our summer attendant Stephen Rutt gave a talk on his experiences of writing about birds (he has a new book due for publication very soon). He called this familiar V-shaped flying geese formation a “skein” – which is a word I have only ever associated with wool.
Jan is also stationed at a good look out post. Its surprising what she can spy from the Robert Burns Centre. Here’s the otter spotters on the Nith, plus some wedding confetti which appeared on the doorstep last Friday.
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Finally, I’ll leave you with a snowdrop update – they are popping up everywhere now!
With very best wishes,
Joanne
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