BRING ON THE RESERVES
The Three Museums Day on Spring Bank Holiday Monday was the first opportunity many of us will have had to visit the Birmingham Museum Collections Centre. Despite its Nechells address, Dollman Street is just south of Duddeston railway station. At first sight, the building is just a large warehouse, typical of trade premises in the area, apart from the civic logo on the frontage. But it is inside where the extraordinary begins.
As the leaflet explains, "Most museums have objects tucked away behind the scenes because they don't have enough space to display everything. Some are too sensitive to be on permanent exhibition. Others include reference and research material like biological specimens and finds from archæological excavations. These are called their reserve collections." And this is where all of the reserve collections for the Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery Service are housed.
The Collections Centre occupies a 1,5 hectare site with 9000m² of storage space with 8km of shelving and 2900 pallet spaces. It also includes - though not on display - a 35m³ freezer for treating infested items and air-conditioned stores for vulnerable objects.
The collection of vehicles alone would grace a complete museum elsewhere. It includes a few that were once in the Museum of Science & Industry (now known as ThinkTank), such as the electric dustcart and Dennis fire appliance, but the stagecoach (a real one that used to be pulled by horses, not a bus owned from Perth) was a surprise, for instance. But already there was the added curiosity of other large objects - civic statues, for instance - being interspersed between the vehicles.
The main warehouse area contains a whole variety of large objects, though in practice visitors can see only those on the bottom two levels of the vast shelving. Unsurprisingly, there are many machine tools from Birmingham's industrial past, but also sculptures, medical equipment, artefacts from ancient Egypt, parts of telephone exchanges, model steam locomotives, various stuffed animals, a hand-carved wooden bicycle from Africa, and so on. And while one assumes everything is catalogued and in its right place, there does seem to be a random nature to it, like finding a mummified crocodile opposite a Pianola... The adjacent warehouse of smaller exhibits is just as exotic.
Finally, some more transport exhibits, two large model trams, juxtaposed with the civil engineering model of the Aston Expressway.
The Museum Collections Centre has only a couple of open days a year, though visits can be arranged by appointment. If you missed it this May, the next open day this year is on Saturday 6 September. Well worth going! And allow plenty of time to go round.
On 25 May, the extended 750 ran between Wythall, City Centre (Hill Street) and Aston Manor Transport Museum, as has become normal for Two Museums Day. Then, in addition, there was a free bus service linking the City Centre with ThinkTank, the Museum Collections Centre and Aston Manor. The only drawback was that the latter service had a different terminus in the City Centre, making it a rather roundabout journey from Wythall.
Andrew Gardner
Chapel Lane, Wythall, Worcs B47 6JX
Tel : 01564 826471 e-mail us
A registered educational charity no 507191
