One of the areas of biggest changes at the museum will be our brand new entrance. Visitors will come through glass  doors off Bridewell Alley, and into a bigger brighter reception area.  This open space will have our reception desk, shop area, and the iconic Carrow Works fire engine. At the moment the builders are busy laying a new concrete floor, which will be polished. The mix of cement and aggrgate has been fine tuned, and with such a huge space to cover, the builders have been dealing with literally tons of material.  In other buildings, this would be pumped in, off a lorry, but because of the location of the museum – this hasnt been possible – it’s all going in by hand! We look forward to seeing the end results.

Following the project’s appearance on BBC Radio Norfolk, interest has been building in one of our new galleries which will include a display about going out in Norwich in the 1950s and 1960s.

Ruth Burwood, Senior Access Curator, appeared on the Breakfast Show a couple of weeks ago talking about the project and asking people to get in touch if they had memories of going out in the city.

Since then, people have been getting in touch, telling us about the bands they saw, and  their favourite haunts. This week, we were offered a Beatles magazine, dated Christmas 1963.  It looks well-loved, and the team have enjoyed reading all about John, Paul, George and Ringo. All in the name of background research…

Have you got memories of going out in the city? Did you regularily visit the Samson and Hercules, or any other night spot? Did you see a top band at one of the city’s venues? Maybe you met your partner while you were out and about, would you be happy to share your stories with us? If  so, we’d love to hear from you!

The Bridewell Project curators have continued their research this week, discovering even more fantastic items.

Hannah Maddox, Project Curator, has spent time looking at our wealth of paper based collections and has discovered a booklet produced by Curls department store in 1956.

The booklet, designed to promote the opening of the shiny new store, explores the firm’s history and describes the store’s destruction by enemy bombing in 1942.

Amongst many wonderful period illustrations of the different departments, it explains the ethos behind the new store.

 ‘All goods are displayed on the principle that customers should be encouraged to see and handle them. All departments are easily accessible. Escalators – the first in East Anglia – are there to carry customers between the ground floor and the first and second floors. A capacious lift takes prams or invalid chairs to all floors.’

This got us thinking that this vision of a newly refurbished building and its new accessible services is very similar to our own!

It has also prompted further thought. For months now we have been trying to put our finger on what makes Norwich so unique. So I was thrilled to find an answer to this question hidden in the pages of this little book.

It reads, ‘Norwich is a city with personality, a personality created by a peculiar mix of ancient and modern.’

The answer, after all this pondering, was hiding in our filing cabinets….

Curators have been hard at work this week, working on the list of objects to go on display in the new galleries. The Gallery Teams have been making visits to our various stores, viewing old favourites as well as uncovering previously unseen collections.

The Shopping and Trading Gallery Team have been looking at collections related to Rumsey Wells, the famous Norwich cap maker, Butcher’s store and Grint’s corner shop amongst many others. They are now tasked with refining a list of over one thousand objects, for consideration by our external designers and in-house display and conservation teams.

Gems found so far include some glass transparencies featuring adverts for Rumsey Wells’ shop, possibly for use in the local cinema. One of the adverts boasts ‘Finest Norfolk Hare Fur Felts Made Only By Rumsey Wells, Norwich – The Most Expensive Cap Maker in the World!’

Work continues on site at a good pace. Last week, we met with our design team to look through paint colours for the internal walls. It is always tricky choosing paint colours and on this scale it was quite a task. The builders apply the ‘match pot’ samples next week. Time will tell if we made the right choice…

Archaeologists from NAU have been on site this week, and have examined the archway revealed last week, as the builders started to make careful repairs to some plaster on interior walls.  They have concluded that this does not go all the way through the wall, so was not a window or doorway, but is more likely to have been a window-shapped niche. It’s very difficult to date, but is probably 15th century, and there may be other similar architectural features that have been covered over time.

We’ve been visited by an artist from Norwich-based Graffiti group, Stickyfingerz this week. Tony Allen is interested in using the hoardings which are covering our scaffolding at the moment as a ‘blank canvas’ for a mural, and is hoping to paint it up at the end of the week.  The idea is to reflect the different businesses on the alleyway, and to provide something bright and colourful for the duration of the time that the scaffold will remain in place. We look forward to seeing the results!

The builders are starting to repair some of the walls in the earlier part of the building, which had been rendered with lime plaster this week. As work was carried out on a wall which was in the small room where the old forge display once stood, a bricked up arch was revealed. At this stage it is hard to tell whether this was a window, or a wall, but there is no evidence of either on the exterior wall (opposite St Andrews Church).  The room was used as a log store in the 1700s, so possibly this was a way of getting large logs into the building. Archaeologists will be on site next week to make an assessment of its date and function.

In another development, we have been in talks with Norwich-based graffiti artist Tony Allen from Stickyfingerz who is very keen to paint a mural on the hoardings covering the building at the moment. Tony is part of a project which encourages artists to paint in areas where they have been given consent. They are looking at making the designs of the murals reflect the businesses on the alleyway – watch this space!

It’s been an exciting week for many of the staff working on the Bridewell project, as some of them were able to see the progress inside the museum for the first time in weeks. Where there is significant change in the galleries, things are really starting to take shape, which makes it much easier to envisage the new displays. The shaft has been created for the new lift, which will enable wheelchair users full access to the building for the first time. A new doorway has been created, and eventually visitors will be able to wander from the entrance area, into the sunny courtyard. Our designers from Ugly studios have also been on site this week, and are starting to translate their ideas off the page… and into the spaces. A great deal of inspiration was found in a recent trip to the Museum of London. The newly refrubished galleries were impressive, and although the budget was much larger we all came away with food for thought! And on the subject of food..it looks as if the Bridewell Museum will soon have a new neighbour, the Bridewell Deli which closed sometime ago is being refurbished…making way for a new cafe. We wish them well.

The builders have moved in at the Bridewell Museum and are making great progress with the new entrance. Draper and Nichols are used to working in old buildings like ours, so were not too surprised to uncover a set of steps that had probably been hidden for over a hundred years. The steps are located in what will be the new entrance and are evidence that this was the way in for factory workers, when the Bridewell was used for making boots and shoes before it became a museum. Scaffolding is up all along the front of the building, which means the builders can work safely up on the roof (thank goodness it’s been sunny this week!) and also excavate out at the front. As work progresses on site, the curatorial team have been busy selecting objects which will be going into the new displays and working with our local design company, Ugly Studios, to decide how these will look. There’s lots to consider as over twenty thousand objects came out of the Bridewell before it closed!

While The Bridewell’s doors are closed, we will be posting information about what’s going on behind the scenes. So keep reading this blog for the inside story!