A uniform worn by a bandsman who was once a member of Castleton Silver Band has been included in a new display in Castleton Museum.
The display includes memorabilia of the Ancient Garland Ceremony which has been held every year on 29 May since the nineteenth century, The band accompanies the Garland procession through the streets to the Market Place, providing the traditional music for the Garland dances performed by village children.
Castleton Museum has reopened on March 29 after new flooring has been installed in the Visitor Centre, Shop and Museum. Castleton Historical Society is delighted that it has been possible to reinstate most of the displays in time for the Easter holiday weekend.
New signage has been installed over the entrance to the Museum which will help to guide visitors to this area.
The Museum will be reopening shortly after urgent repairs have been completed to the floor which was damaged by severe flooding in October 2023.
The floor in the retail area (left) is finished and looking really good. The floor in the Museum area (right) is nearly finished. The Visitor Centre will hopefully be open very soon though the opening of the Museum will take a little longer while the displays are reinstated.
Work is progressing well on the replacement of the floor in the Visitor Centre retail area and Castleton Museum. Watch this space for further updates including the date for reopening the Centre and Museum.
Currently the Museum (housed within Castleton Visitor Centre), is temporarily closed awaiting repairs to the floor which has been damaged as a result of the recent flooding in the village late last year. Castleton Historical Society are removing the displays from the cases and the artefacts are being carefully wrapped and taken to store to enable the remedial work to be carried out.
Once the building work has been completed the displays can be reinstated and the Museum reopened. CHS is working hard with the Peak Park staff to minimise any inconvenience to visitors and to keep the closure of the Museum to the minimum.
To link with Remembrance Day, the latest display in our new temporary display cabinets showcases items mainly from the First World War, including some personal items not on display before, such as cigarette cases, field glasses, goggles and pay books, most of which belonged to local residents.
Photographs of some of our many serving men are also included. Of course these men and those who fell in WW1 and WW2 are remembered on the War Memorial in the Market Place and also in St Edmund’s Church in the heart of the village.
For our talk on June 15, 2023, we were most fortunate to have as our speaker, an archaeologist who has made a life long study of hill forts in the UK but predominately our own local hillfort at Mam Tor. Graeme Guilbert’s extensive research has produced detailed information on the earthworks of Mam Tor, including the less obvious platforms within the ramparts, and has thrown light on how the hill fort might have been used.
His recent paper on the subject has been published in Archaeology and Conservation in Derbyshire and the Peak District (ACID) January 2023.
Graeme voiced his great concern about the deterioration of Mam Tor caused by the increasing numbers of visitors walking through the monument and is passionate about the urgency to conserve “one of the archaeological Wonders of the Peak”. He left us with much to think about!
Three new display cabinets just installed in the Museum will be used to showcase artefacts, photographs and documents from the Museum’s extensive archive. These items will illuminate the interesting and varied narratives of the people from Castleton’s past. Many items have rarely been displayed before.
The cabinets will used to display a rolling programme of temporary exhibits, the first being the story of Castleton Hall in the Market Place, known to many in the recent past as the Youth Hostel. Now once again in private hands, it is gradually revealing its fascinating history with a collection of finds discovered during restoration work and photos and background information from the Museum’s archive.
The provision of the cabinets was made possible thanks to a generous award from the Arts Council National Lottery Fund. Castleton Historical Society would also like to acknowledge the superb workmanship of Peakcraft Ltd.
CHS members and guests were treated to an entertaining and fact filled overview of 180 million years of the history of Northerners by Brian Groom, whose book of the same name has reached non fiction best sellers lists. The journey of approximately 50 minutes outlined how the people of the North have shaped the history of Britain and the World in the past and the possibilities for the future and prompted an interesting Q and A session afterwards.
Castleton Historical Society Blog 