Robert Burns Ellisland Trust Development Policy: Reflecting and Enriching Lives through Collections _______________________________________________________________________________ Name of museum: Ellisland Museum & Farm Name of governing body: Robert Burns Ellisland Trust Date on which this policy was approved by governing body: 08/11/2020 Policy review procedure: This policy will be published and reviewed from time to time, at least once every five years. Date at which this policy is due for review: 08/11/ 2025 Museums Galleries Scotland will be notified of any changes to the collections development policy, and the implications of any such changes for the future of collections. RBET Development Policy 1. Relationship to other relevant policies / plans of the organisation 1.1. The Trust’s statement of purpose is to protect, promote, and enrich the historic and natural environment at Ellisland to aid understanding and appreciation of the poet’s life and work, and to improve the health and wellbeing of all. 1.2. The governing body will ensure that both acquisition and disposal are carried out openly and with transparency. 1.3. By definition, Robert Burns Ellisland Trust (RBET, or ‘the Trust’) has a long-term purpose and holds collections in trust for the benefit of the public in relation to its stated objectives. The Trustees therefore accept the principle that sound curatorial reasons must be established before consideration is given to any acquisition to the collection, or the disposal of any items in the Trust’s collection. 1.4. Acquisitions outside the current stated policy will only be made in exceptional circumstances. 1.5. The Trust recognises its responsibility, when acquiring additions to its collections, to ensure that care of collections, documentation arrangements and use of collections will meet the requirements of the Museum Accreditation Standard. This includes using Spectrum primary procedures for collections management. It will take into account limitations on collecting imposed by such factors as staffing, storage and care of collection arrangements. 1.6. The Trust will undertake due diligence and make every effort not to acquire, whether by purchase, gift, bequest or exchange, any object or specimen unless the governing body or responsible officer is satisfied that the Trust can acquire a valid title to the item in question. 1.7. In exceptional cases, disposal may be motivated principally by financial reasons. The method of disposal will therefore be by sale and the procedures outlined below will be followed. In cases where disposal is motivated by financial reasons, the governing body will not undertake disposal unless it can be demonstrated that all the following exceptional circumstances are met in full: • the disposal will significantly improve the long-term public benefit derived from the remaining collection • the disposal will not be undertaken to generate short-term revenue (for example to meet a budget deficit) • the disposal will be undertaken as a last resort after other sources of funding have been thoroughly explored • extensive prior consultation with sector bodies has been undertaken • the item under consideration lies outside the museum’s established permanent collection RBET Development Policy 2 2. History of the collections The Trust has been collecting material culture since its foundation in 1923. Collections held by the Trust are the things we, and the previous trust have purposefully selected to keep for the future and include material culture of value to Scotland principally through association with the poet, Robert Burns (1759-96). We use the word ‘collection’ to include our collections of material culture, archives, books, and photographs. We exclude from this term, anything that cannot be moved, such as buildings and monuments (with the exception of portable archaeology). Robert Burns took up the lease of Ellisland Farm in early May 1788. He brought his wife Jean Armour, and his two year-old son Robert (Bobby) to Ellisland in December that year. At Ellisland, Robert co-designed a six-apartment house (described as a “modest mansion” by visitors in 1789) for his growing family, with views over the River Nith. During his time at Ellisland, which he described as ‘the poet’s choice’, Burns wrote some of his best-known work, including Ae Fond Kiss, Auld Lang Syne, and Tam o’ Shanter. After promotion in the Excise, he moved with his family to Dumfries in November 1791. Ellisland continued to be farmed by a succession of owners until it was purchased by Mr George Williamson, a solicitor1 and one-time President of Edinburgh Burns Club. Following Williamson’s death the following year, a trust was set up by his brother, John Wilson Williamson, and assets disposed to it, 'for the purpose of their being set aside and established as a property for the British Nation'. Any income was to be used for the upkeep and maintenance of the whole site ‘in such a public manner in connection with the memory of Burns as they [the trustees] may decide’. From the outset of the trust, there was an expectation that the tenant of the farm would admit visitors to the farmhouse. The fledgling trust had issues with the sitting tenant, Mr Grierson, whom, they claimed was not keen to receive visitors on the pretence of ‘continual spring cleaning’.2 On the death of Mr Grierson, the trust advertised the lease of the entire farm with the option of retaining the farmhouse. Mr Findlay of Friars Carse Mains took the lease of the land and farm buildings, which then allowed the trust to advertise the farmhouse with stipulations about visitor access. ‘The house is let under the condition that one room will be reserved for relics and other things of interest relating to the Poet Burns, this room may be used by you [the tenant], but you will be expected to give careful supervision to the articles placed in the room. In this room will be kept a visitors book in which it is hoped all visitors will enter their names as they visit the house of which you will allow inspection at all reasonable times. It is not intended that visitors pry into your bedrooms, but the two end rooms and kitchen should be available for visitors to see…You will be informed, if possible, a day or two beforehand when a Club or Association of people intend to visit Ellisland, but for the casual visitor no notice can be given’.3 The first recorded acquisition appears to have been in 1928, a toddy rubber (chequered black and red cloth) said to have belonged to Agnes McLehose and used by Burns at Edinburgh, 1787-88, a gift from J M Harkom, on 5th August. 1 Hendry, Margaret L, ‘Ellisland’, in Burns Chronicle, 1966. p.44 2 Minute, 12th May 1932 3 Minute, 15th April 1933 RBET Development Policy 3 The second recorded objects in the collection were donations of books to the new trust. These are noted in the Minute of 5th June 1931 as ‘certain old books that were in the Dunscore Library’ which Burns was instrumental in founding. These books were given to the trust by at least three different individuals.4 At the same time, a portrait of the late John Wilson Williamson, brother of the donor of the farm, was received from his estate. No doubt eager to have an image of Burns on site, in the same year the trust purchased a bronze statuette of Burns by Henry Snell Gamley (1865-1928)5, a pupil of Édouard Lantéri and William Grant Stevenson. Gamley became a leading Scottish bronze sculptor involved in another Burns related sculpture, the memorial to Clarinda in Canongate churchyard, Edinburgh unveiled in 1922. In 1928, he hired Auguste Rodin’s studio in Paris6 to work on a statue of Robert Burns for export to Cheyenne, Wyoming. The Ellisland statue is a limited edition miniature taken from the model of the Wyoming statue, commissioned by an Ayrshire born widow of an American cattle rancher and unveiled in 1929. A plaster version of this is owned by Robert Burns Birthplace Museum7. Major gifts followed in 1937 and 1938. 1937: Miss Ferguson. Items of a domestic nature (Jean Armour’s cotton hat, pillow slip, clothes brush, nursing stool) 1938: Arthur Basil Simpson (three manuscripts with close connections to Burns’s time at Ellisland, including On Seeing a Wounded Hare Limp Past Me, and four panes of glass inscribed by the poet at the Hermitage) 1938: Reverend Dr James King Hewison, domestic items including the remnants of a spinet (once played to Burns) repurposed into a what-not, and a cup and saucer (which belonged to Elizabeth Burgess) In 1938, the trust resolved to purchase a safe ‘for storing the most valuable relics’ which speaks to the undertaking they had given donors as well as perhaps conditions at the farmhouse and the sporadic nature then of visitation.8 By 1940, the collection was valued at £2200, the equivalent of £125,000 in 2020.9 During the 1940s, there was a growing concern for the historic nature of the house. This had begun some years before: in 1938, the minutes record that an ‘original mantel shelf was also placed in its old position’.10 During this time, the trustees restated their mission, ‘Having in view that the chief purpose of this trust was the maintaining and preserving [of] the property entrusted to them as closely as possible to the state in which it existed in the time of Burns’.11 Since the trustees rejected an offer by the land tenant to occupy it as part of the lease on the basis that this would ‘overturn their policy regarding the historical and museum nature of the house’.12 However, this focus on authenticity was patchy.