Cotswold Archaeology at Stroud’s Museum in the Park

Cotswold Archaeology has just completed a scoping  and rationalisation study of the archaeology collection at The Museum in Park, Stroud. Hazel O’Neill (our Post-Excavation Supervisor at Kemble) and her team of volunteers audited and photographed almost 1000 boxes of finds and documentary archives, to allow the museum to better understand what they’re holding and how to store it safely.  Some of the sites dated back to the 1970s and featured some inventive on-site packaging!

While this project was running, other loyal CA volunteers have been continuing with their sterling efforts back at Kemble, in particular working on large amounts of finds recovered from excavations in the centre of Gloucester, and preparing these artefacts for deposition with the Museum of Gloucester.

To thank our amazing volunteers for their enduring hard work and support over the past year, on 7 February we had a behind-the-scenes tour of the stores of the Museum in the Park. Kindly led by Documentation & Collections Officer, Alexia Clark, the volunteers were treated to many sights, including the beautiful 18th-century book  ‘An Account of the Remains of a Roman Villa Discovered at Woodchester’ by Samuel Lysons, and the extremely rare bones of the dinosaur Megalosaurus Bucklandii. They also saw the patent for the world’s first lawnmower, and a desiccated cat that had been placed behind a chimney breast in a local mill to ward off evil spirits. It seemed to have worked, as the visit was followed up with tea and cake in the museum.

Hazel O’Neill