This month I am visiting one of Northamptonshire’s great little museums. It’s small but perfectly formed, with regularly changing and very imaginative exhibitions. I am visiting Daventry Museum, winner of the Northamptonshire Heritage Organisation of the Year 2019.

Over the years, Daventry Museum has had an interesting past and several homes, reaching a low point when it closed owing to funding problems in 2004. However its heritage is important to its townsfolk, and Daventry Town Council worked hard to find a creative and cost effective way to reopen the museum. Rather than just providing a home for a static collection, it has developed exhibitions on conversation starting themes covering a wide range of Daventry’s heritage, with a remit to reach out to many different learning groups and schools.

And what a rich heritage it covers!

There’s a great display about local Borough Hill and its environs, which overlook the area. This land has been used over many millennia. The most ancient traces found there of early man, Homo Erectus, include an Acheulean hand axe believed to be 500,000 years old. The museum holds some wonderful Neolithic and Bronze Age finds, including pottery and tools. And one of the most remarkable exhibits is a large fragment of a Roman mosaic from a building believed to have been a temple on Borough Hill. There’s also a great story of the excavation of Bannaventa, a nearby fortified Roman staging post located on nearby Watling Street (the A5 to us) described delightfully as ‘the Roman equivalent of Watford Gap Services”.

More recent history is explored too, including the ever popular Victorian replica shop, town trades, and local characters. Of course the story is told of the local BBC Transmitting Station 5XX, and how it made the town’s name famous throughout the land with its call sign ‘Daventry Calling’. This station operated between 1925 and 1992 with short medium and long wave transmission. In its heyday there were over 40 masts visible, dominating the town’s skyline. Now just a single DAB mast remains. My eye was caught by the rather beautiful words written by Alfred Noyes for the opening ceremonies of the Overseas Transmitter, referencing the archaic pronunciation of Daventry of ‘Dane-tree’.

The joy of this museum for me lies in the imagination of its brilliant volunteer team. There’s a single hard working part-time staff member facilitating the regularly changing events and temporary exhibitions, and over the years they have produced some of the most moving displays I have seen in any museum. Their award winning ‘Empty Chair’ exhibition commemorating the soldiers of Daventry lost during WWI and who never came home, simply moved me to tears. The volunteers also staff the museum during its 4/5 days opening per week and are both knowledgeable and very approachable. This October their exhibition is ‘World War Two – The People’s War’ commemorating 80 years since the start of World War Two, and describing the impact on those on the Home Front.

The Museum describes itself as a cultural hub for the town, a place to share stories and to learn about Daventry’s heritage. It reminded me of the closing words of the poem for the BBC by Alfred Noyse

Daventry calling… Dark and still…
The tree of memory stands like a sentry
Over the grave on the silent hill.

For more information please visit www.daventrymuseum.org.uk