York Castle Museum
The refurbishment and re-opening of Kirkgate, our famous recreated Victorian street, dominated and invigorated the year at York Castle Museum, increasing visitor numbers by 19%.
York Museums Trust secured a major grant of £260,000 (65% of the costs) from the Wolfson Foundation to breathe new life into the Kirkgate display.
Kirkgate’s policeman meets visitors
New shops opened including a grocer’s shop serving the poor and a toy shop. Visitors could walk into these shops for the first time, plus the existing sweet shop, to meet new costumed “shopkeepers” and look at original goods. Several other shops were redecorated and redisplayed.
A Victorian school room was created, the police station was opened up to visitors and a parlour was opened behind the clockmaker’s shop to give an idea of what living accommodation was like.
A new “policeman” character patrolled the street and visitors could pick up a newspaper, the Kirkgate Examiner, to read about Victorian issues. These issues were brought up to date with a new area focussing on modern-day York people.
The work also included new lighting and sound systems, which were used to create the changing atmosphere of a busy street, re-laying the cobbles on the street, to make the surface more accessible, and mending the roof. We are now able to host formal dinners in the street which have proved increasingly popular for corporate hospitality events.
At the end of the year we opened Unfair Trade, an exhibition which showed how many everyday objects within the existing displays had their origins in the slave trade.
It opened to co-incide with the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade on 25 March, 2007.
To highlight the issues involved, we organised a special event on that day on the Eye of York, a green area outside the entrance to the museum, and invited volunteers to lie down within the outline of the shape of a slave ship to mark the anniversary.
Volunteers mark out the shape of a slave ship outside the museum, to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade,