Royal Society Award to Beaminster Museum
Beaminster Museum has been awarded a grant to purchase a new 3D Scanner to enable using 3D scanning to improve access and education to heritage objects
Royal Society Award text
Beaminster Museum is a volunteer run community museum in West Dorset, keen to strengthen links to the local community and nearby museums. As a relatively new museum, (founded 1995) much of the historical and archaeological material from the area is in other museums.
The museum plans to fill gaps in telling the story of their local community by using 3D scans and digital display to share material on display elsewhere, but also to use the material in new ways to help improve their educational offering. The scans will be used to tell the historical stories in a more interactive way to help appeal to a younger audience, especially the groups of local schoolchildren who visit, and for whom there are themed visits such as on the Iron Age, or recently on WW1 and a local Victoria Cross recipient (the first air based VC – William Rhodes Moorhouse), and share more material to a wider public audience.
Our initial focus will be on the Roman Fort of Waddon Hill, the material from which is scattered between Dorchester, Bridport and Beaminster, and on the local National Nature Reserve fossils, from Horn Park Quarry.
This could be a library of all the artefacts from Waddon Hill, from the Antiquarian finds of the 19th c, the Webster excavations, and the personal collection of Mr. Tolley. Currently these are scattered between Bridport, Dorchester, Poole, The Ashmolean, The British Museum and Beaminster, and have never all been assembled in one place.
Below are some examples of what future work might look like, but these models were prepared before acquiring the new scanner. Click on the icon bottom right of the model to make it full screen.
Item 1.0 Waddon Hill : Two handled Flask fragment- Webster, Dorset Museum Proceedings 1962, course pottery item 4, DMAG number 1962.46. Ref 1. Dimensions approx. 200 mm tall.
Two handled Flask fragment – Webster 1962, course pottery item 4, DMAG number 1962.46
| A double handled flagon with the handles showing a peak and the rim with an internal lid seating, in Black Burnished ware with brown oxidised patches. This is a fully romanised form but made in the local native technique including the vertical burnishing on the neck, a feature of later flagons made in the South West. Kindly on loan from Dorset Museum and Art Gallery. |
Paleolithic Hand Axe from Hursey Common, Broadwindsor
| The oldest man made object in our collection, this is one of a group of hand axes were found in the1940’s just outside Broadwindsor. They date to a time before the current human species, and are probably Neanderthal, from about 300,000 years ago, before the recent Ice Ages. Dimensions approx. 180 mm tall. |
Bulbury Camp Bull Figurine
| An Iron Age bronze figure, one of a pair, thought to be rein guides, unearthed in the 1880’s. The hoard included a large anchor, on display in Dorchester, but Beaminster Museum has a part of the anchor chain on display. Kindly on loan from Dorset Museum and Art Gallery. Dimensions approx. 80 mm tall. |