Rod Collins

Today saw me out and about once again - this time a return trip to the historic city of Lincoln.
I went for one reason only, that was to take a picture of The Chapter House, there were plenty I could use on the net etc but it somehow made sense to drive all the way there and take my own !
Good job I did too otherwise I wouldn’t have gone to the Lincoln Museum
Called The Collection is was opened in 2005 and cost £12.5 million - money well spent !

First things first - the Museum at Lincoln is superb !
I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed my visit. It’s a new building and superbly appointed, beautifully laid out with just the right blend of tradition and technology. If you’re unfortunate enough to have children there are also plenty of interactive things to stimulate their interest.

Admission is free ! which is remarkable and hats off to the local council for it, well played (for a change)
It should be noted that written permission is needed to take photographs, I acquired such bona fides with ease as clearly the extremely helpful and friendly staff immediately recognized me
How to get there:
Walk up Steep Hill and turn right into Danes Terrace (going toward the Usher Gallery) and you can’t miss it

One of the things that really caught my eye was this skull, it’s over 4,000 years old and was excavated from a barrow at Walcott Common and is the oldest known skull found in the county.The exhibits are laid out in chronological order so you can see the development of Lincolnshire stage by stage, period by period. It’s not only educational but fascinating as well. You have to actually see these artifacts in the raw to truly appreciate them - a picture of an old Saxon sword is just that - a picture - but look at the real thing and you cannot but imagine the arm that wielded it, the damage it did, where it’s life took it - marvellous !

There are also reproductions that you can handle and even things you can try on. The Roman Helmet for example, I suspect these things are primarily there to amuse children which, as you can see, they reached their target audience.

Dugout Boat

Perhaps the most visually spectacular piece is this 2,500 year old dugout boat carved out of a single oak tree. It was found in the River Witham and is remarkably well preserved. Once again who used it and where did they go ?

I can’t say too much about the next item, shown below, it caught my eye and caused some excitement. It was not specifically labelled with description, unlike virtually everything else, but the markings caught the Golden-Eye. I haven’t been this excited since Jessica and Paris washed their cars

Potentially Very Exciting for Your Host

I need to do a load of research but I hope to bring you more about this object - if I can that is !
Please try to contain your excitement - I can almost hear it from here

There is a ton of other great stuff as well, what you really need to do is get yourself down there and check it out yourself.
Culture lovers everywhere will no doubt recall with vividity and unrestrained joy an earlier post on the Battle of Winceby - well guess what the picture on the left is ?

10 points - go to the top of the class !
It is indeed a piece of armour which was ploughed up near the Battlefield site and is believed to have been abandoned by a Royalist fleeing The Battle of Winceby

If all that wasn’t enough, and it should be, I had the great good fortune to be there when there was a Tennyson Exhibition on.
Alfred Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was Poet Laureate and was born in Somersby in Lincolnshire, as I’m sure you all knew !
This was yet another joy. By even more great good fortune I had just seen a TV programme (shock, horror - there was once something on worth watching) on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which included a lot of the work done to illustrate the books of Tennyson.
So it was great to see some of the woodcuts by leading Pre-Raphaelites such as J.E. Millais, William Holman Hunt (at least 4 of his) and Dante Gabriel Rosetti. There is also a superb painting there by Rosetti not to mention an Arthurian painting on loan from the Queen of Guinevere Begging Forgiveness of King Arthur - all right up the Goldeneye Alley !

There’s more to come from this trip but I had yet another blinding day
The only thing was when I filled in the questionnaire at the end, praising the staff to the roof I might add, the check boxes for “number in your party” didn’t have a box for just one
Artifactly Yours
Rod - The Lone Shredder

See Also the Other Lincoln Museum The Museum of Lincolnshire Life - Our Visit