Doesn't Brigg deserve its own little museum to help entertain and inform tourists and day visitors?
A recent visit to Oban, Scotland (population about 8,000) showed what can be done by a small town. It's got a wonderful museum, staffed by volunteers. No entry charge - visitors make a donation, if they wish.
It offers many interesting photos, newspaper cuttings, old military uniforms, items of memorabilia, etc, showing the history of Oban and district. Plus a TV playing a short DVD about the town, featuring famous folk of the past, characters, local industries (eg whisky, fishing) and places of interest.
Brigg has a very fine Tourist Information Centre provided in the era of Glanford Borough Council, of which we have every reason to feel proud (pictured right).
But surely we ought to have a museum where tourists can go to learn more about our town, if we really want people from afar to come here, stay and spend their money in our own business premises and so boost the local economy.
There are empty town centre shops that could be rented to house Brigg Museum. How about somewhere in the Angel? The Courtyard, perhaps. Or elsewhere in this perfectly situated old building.
Personally, I've never encountered anyone in Brigg who could be described as a tourist (ie coming here from elsewhere and staying in the locality). Have you? But I've been to many places in the UK as a tourist. To add salt into the wounds, the coaches pick up in Brigg to take us off to somewhere else! Isn't it time, as a town, we started to redress the balance?
Brigg has some wonderful old buildings, musical links to Percy Grainger and Delius, the Exchange where Winston Churchill stayed in the run-up to D-Day (pictured below), fine speciality shops, the weekly general markets (dating back to the 13th century), an award-winning monthly farmers' market, a super selection of pubs, Brigg Garden Centre (where coach-loads of trippers from afar spend the day without stopping off in town), ghost walks (by BASH), Ancholme Leisure Centre (just over the border in Scawby Brook), the under-exploited River Ancholme (boat trips round the Island?) and one of the oldest football clubs in the world. Actress Joan (now Lady) Plowright, widow of the great Sir Laurence Olivier, grew up in Brigg - and the family's house is still there in Central Square. Sir Larry gave a famous, highly-acclaimed portrayal of Henry V ("Once more unto the breach...), but let's not forget how, in 1541, King Henry VIII and his Queen paid a visit to Kettleby Manor - just a mile or two away in what's now West Lindsey. Similarly, just out of town there's Wrawby post mill - surely worthy of a visit by coach-tour parties to Brigg.
Add a museum to all the above highlights - featuring pictures like the one above taken the best part of a century ago - and you start to get a place where people would come by car, or on an organised coach trip, and happily spend a few days. Just as we recently did in Oban and district. Coach firms are always looking for somewhere "new" - if we can use that term about Brigg - by way of a destination to put in their brochures and upload on their websites.
Don't expect North Lincolnshire Council to take the lead, the way politics and local interests operate. If our unitary authority did something special like this for Brigg, there could be an outcry about Barton, Kirton, Scunthorpe, Crowle (and other places) deserving exactly the same treatment. (Remember how Winterton got the astroturf hockey pitch in the 1990s because it was that town's turn to get something and Brigg had just had a by-pass?)
But that's not to say North Lincolnshire Council couldn't be persuaded to offer support and maybe chip in, if Brigg, as a town, could get things under way.
The Brigg Community-Led Plan, now in the early stages of being put together by a special committee, might take this topic onboard. Brigg Blog comment poster in chief, Ken Harrison, is a member of that body and we'd very much like to hear his opinion about our idea. If he, or any other members of the Community-Led Plan, think boosting tourism with, or without, a Brigg Museum has any merit, they can raise it with the rest of the team at the next meeting. Fingers crossed!
I've previously commented that Brigg needs a museum -
ReplyDeletea facility that not only displays Brigg historical artefacts, but also the surrounding area.
The musuem could include the geology of the area; the Zeppelin bomb in Wrawby; RFC/RAF Elsham; the skeleton, 'complete apart from a few finger bones' found under my house in 1911; the Brigg Boat; land drainage.....etc.
As separate issues - there is a need to get someone like Time Team to re-examine the route of the glamping (interlocking horizontal planks over a bog/under river) trackway and ford that was allegedly discovered in about 1860 - then lost. (personally, I believe that 'Glanford Brigg' originated from the corruption of 'glamp-ford' at Brigg. (rather than the dubious 'place of merriment')
Certainly, the glamping track would pre-date Brigg as a place of merriment and market.
In addition, (and I said this b4) the only example of the C19th work-man's cottages - in Cary Lane and presently used for storage - should, as and when they become available - be dismantled and recontructed on a more suitable site as a valuable reminder of Brigg's working past.
Should we form an action group for a museum? Any volunteers?
You had a skeleton too? We found one under our house in 1976 when a new gas mains was being dug. Workmen called in SOCO who took the body away, and the remains were analyzed back in the lab. For a while there were a few interesting theories about its provenance: murder? burial on unhallowed ground? witchcraft?
ReplyDeleteHowever, the mystery was solved when investigators discovered that a gold ring on the skeleton's left hand bore the inscription: "UK HIDE-AND-SEEK CHAMPION 1973".
On a more serious note, even if Brigg doesn't have short-term or overnight visitors, day-tourism can still be good for business. Simply providing a nice atmosphere to have a drink and something to eat can be thought of as encouraging this kind of tourism. Definitely something Brigg already does, but also can improve upon.
ReplyDeleteThe economics of museums aren't great, so you will need to think waaaay outside the box if you want to do something in Brigg. An idea (connected possibly to the workers' cottages in Cary Lane) is to have a "window museum". In this case: spend a small amount of money renovating those cottages and making them secure; fill the inside with artefacts you want to display, and attach a vinyl sticker to the window explaining what can be seen.
The benefits are that it reuses difficult buildings, needs no permanent staffing (you can change the displays as much or as little as you like), requires less insurance, low utility bills (depending on how much you light it or not), and is 'open' 24/7. The major problem is with sun bleaching, but that can be mitigated or worked around; though the possibility of vandalism also needs to be considered.
It might be something worth thinking about, if you're seriously going to consider the idea of a museum.
PS, can we change the town's name back to *Glanford* Brigg? Branding is so important if you're trying to sell the town, and having something more unique and memorable is good.
Sova -
ReplyDeleteAgree - let's re-re-brand 'Brigg', which is a bit guttoral, to 'Glanford Brigg'......it sounds posher!!
All the posh towns have double-barrelled names:
Moreton-in-the Marsh,
Chipping Norton,
Blandford Forum,
Spital-in-the-Street,
San Francisco.......
I use to live at Weston-Under-Lizard many years ago..and my next door neighbour was Lord Bradford..but I didn't get too posh!!
We could call the 'Brigg And District Museum Action Group' = BADMAG.
Now to find a site - rule out the Angel as already being too crowded.
The Old Courthouse would have been good, but it's now private.
We could create a small living museum by re-siting local historic buildings....where?? In the Rec? Waste ground near rail station? I suppose the police still need their station?.....the problem with Glanford Brigg is that there been too much in-filling that we now can't make a sandwich.
........and a not too unrelated comment -
ReplyDeleteWith a little tweak here and there, Brigg, sorry Glanford Brigg, with its range of historical buildings could make a very suitable film/tv set.
Nige and I will write a pilot script for a historical drama, 'Crossing the Ancholme with Glanford Rabbits'......and send it off to the BBC and Warner Bros.
Well, I'm not bothered about whether Glanford Brigg sounds posh or not, just whether it's memorable and unique.
ReplyDeleteSova,
ReplyDeleteTrue & agree - and Glanford Brigg ((Bridge(ing) Glamp(ing)Ford)), or colloquially -'Bridging the river by a glamping(plankway in river bed/across bog) ford' - could well be more historically pure.
Join the Community-Led Plan team - we need creative thinkers.