Happy Birthday Havering Museum!
On 26 May 2021, Havering Museum should have been celebrating its 11th Birthday, but sadly the volunteers were unable to celebrate together due to the government COVID-19 regulations.
The good news is, the Museum reopened to visitors on Friday 23 July 2021.
Although the Museum had been closed since 21 March 2020, a great deal of work had been going on behind-the-scenes, preparing for future events and exhibitions and completing essential maintenance work, including an update of the alarm system.
Among the major exhibitions at the Museum is part of the Havering Bronze Age Hoard that has been on display at the Museum of London Docklands. The Hoard, discovered at Wennington, is one of the largest ever discovered in the UK.
The Directors are also moving towards bringing back our two Over-50 clubs, events, talks, school and uniform group visits, Photographic Group and our successful room hire that is a major part of our yearly income.
Our economic stability would have been a great deal worse but for our Marketing Director who worked extremely hard to obtain substantial funding and grants from various government and local council sources.
Unfortunately, it was inevitable that we would lose some volunteers during the lockdown. Sadly this included several of our talented younger graduates who were spending a period of time with us working on the Collections and Digital programme. Fortunately, they did manage to obtain employment during the year. They obviously left with all good wishes for the future. We can be proud the Museum played a part in their future development.
So, Havering Museum has survived COVID-19 in reasonably good shape and is looking forward to welcoming visitors back and securing a successful future.
Peter Stewart, Chair
Havering Museum
Photos: The Galleries… packed with objects telling the Havering story.
