Yesterday, I’d attended a tour to explore the Victoria Tunnel, a 19th century underground wagonway that linked Spital Tongue Colliery to the River Tyne. The tunnel actually ran close to the Hancock Museum and I came across a tunnel entrance as I approached the museum. This entrance is now actually blocked off to the public. I recommend going on the fascinating Ouseburn Trust’s tour of the tunnel, which covers a section closer to the River Tyne.   

The museum had a roughly square footprint and was organised on two levels, with some areas of the upper floor missing so that you could look down to the ground floor exhibits. I spent most of the day wandering around the displays and heading to items that drew my interest. 

Ancient Greeks

The Ancient Greeks gallery was originally created by Professor Brian Shefton with a grant of £25. He procured three Greek pots with the money. Quite a few have been added since then, as well as many other types of artefacts from the Ancient Greek world. I liked the stylistic and intricate designs on the pottery. It was hard to believe that they were around 2,500 years old; they looked quite new. All the items were displayed in glass cases, as might be expected. I did worry when some school kids were chasing each other around one display case containing some large 400BC amphoras. The wooden  floor boards were a bit loose and all the stomping about made the display shelf rock and I could see the amphoras actually moving in their holders. I strolled away since I didn’t want to be associated with any disaster that might happen. My concentration was then disturbed by a couple of teenage girls who entered the gallery and then proceeded to press every audio description button around before promptly leaving. I was left with a dozen or more David Attenborough narrations that went on for so long and were so noisy that I had to leave the gallery until they stopped. It didn’t prevent my overall enjoyment of the gallery though. The museum’s guidebook says that it is one of the best Greek and Etruscan collections in the country, and on the evidence that I saw, I can well believe it. I just hope it survives future school trips.

Ancient Romans And Hadrian's Wall

The Romans left a great deal in Britain including Hadrian’s Wall, that runs from the Solway Firth to Newcastle. Not surprisingly, the museum is crammed full of Ancient Roman artefacts. I’d walked Hadrian's Wall Path last year and enjoyed the miles and miles of wall and history. A lot of interesting Roman items along the Wall could not be left in situ for security and weathering reasons and so have found themselves in the Hancock Museum. There are altars, coffins, gravestones, coins, jewellery and weaponry on display.  An inscription on one of the stones on display (from Milecastle 38) confirmed that the Wall was built on Hadrian’s orders. There was quite an interesting display that reimagined how Roman altars may have looked when they were painted. Ultraviolet and x-ray technology have found traces of paint on the alters. Paint pigments were made from local, natural materials such as iron ore, chalk and clay to make earthy colours. Rare colours like blue were only used for special artworks. These pigments could have travelled over 1000 miles from other parts of the Empire to reach Britain, and were used in small amounts. The museum's display projected coloured light onto a set of alters. If Roman Britain was anything like the result, then it would have been a lot more colourful than I ever imagined. 

There was a very large screen (two floors high) on which a film loop of an aerial view of Hadrian’s Wall was shown. This was quite interesting to watch since it gave an idea of the scale of the forts and the wall. It showed the remains of the fort at Segedunum (modern day Wallsend). The Hadrian’s Wall Path finishes (or starts) at that location and I recommend visiting the museum there. 

Natural History

The Natural History sections were split into a local Northumbria section and an international section. I’m still not sure what I think of stuffed animals, but I guess it does give you the opportunity to get up close and examine their details. I found the Sperm Whale jaw bone quite interesting. It was from about 200 years old, when streetlights in Newcastle burned whale oil. We may tut-tut now at how the people of that time ever thought this could be sustainable, but I don’t think we should be too quick to judge. My guess is that the people 200 years from now will wonder at how stupid we were to power the world on gas and oil.

A curiosity of the Natural History gallery was the giant Japanese Spider Crab. It is one of the largest known arthropods on the planet. The specimen on show was collected by the Royal Navy in 1877. When John Hancock opened the crab’s crate he found two of its legs were mysteriously missing. Well, I guess those Royal Navy sailors got hungry at some point. Consequently some of the legs on display are models. Even so, it is an incredible specimen. It’s like something you might expect to meet in the Alien film franchise.

Explore!

There was an Explore! gallery of the museum. This was an interesting collection of museum misfits that didn’t really fit into any other galleries. Take for example, the 19th century grotesque Merman. Mermaids and Mermen were often made by craftsmen and fishermen in Japan where they were used in religious ceremonies or exhibited for money. 19th century Europeans were fascinated by these curiosities and many were exported to Europe. A Newcastle University research team x-rayed this merman and found it to be a fish and monkey stitched together. 

Sparkie the budgerigar was also featured in the Explore gallery. He now sits stuffed on a perch in a display case. Sparkie was remarkable in that he had an amazing memory. He had a vocabulary of 500 words. This skill brought him a record deal, an advertising contract and winner of the BBC Cage Bird Contest in 1958. He even had an opera made about him in 2009.    

Another curious case in the Explore! Gallery  was the stuffed wombat. The animal began its life on Cape Barren Island in the Bass Strait between Australia and Tasmania. It was collected alive in 1798 by British sailors. They tried to keep it alive, but it eventually died. It was barrelled up and sent half way around the world to England, eventually ending up at the Literary And Philosophical Society in Newcastle. When the taxidermist came to stuff it, he’d obviously never seen one before and didn’t realise that they move about on four legs. This is why when you see the wombat now it is in the unusual position of sitting up on its hind legs, pretty much like a squirrel. 

World Cultures

The World Cultures gallery had a collection of objects collected from the world over the last 250 years. It even had a Newcastle United FC shirt on display. The most interesting item I found was a suit of armour from Kiribati which is part of the Gilbert Islands. I still wasn’t sure where this was and so had to look it up; the islands are halfway between Australia and Hawaii. The Kiribati armour was used for formal fighting contests until the mid 1800s. The combatants were dressed in coconut fibre armour. Looking at it, I guess it must have felt like wearing a doormat. It must have irritated their skin. It did give good protection though from swords that had edges made out of shark teeth. The example in the display looked like a chainsaw or maybe even one of those zombie knives. Despite the armour, the fighters often received terrible wounds. An information board said that they would sometimes also wear gauntlets edged with shark teeth. Doesn’t sound like much of a tropical paradise to me. 

Fossils Crystals And Gems

The Fossil gallery seemed to attract the  school kids and so it didn’t really get my full attention. Maybe it was the replica skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus Rex that had something to do with it. This fossil skeleton was based on one of the most complete skeletons found in Montana, USA. There were certainly plenty of fossils to look at. I came across one of a Coelacanthus Granulatus which was a fish from the late Permian period, about 250 million years ago. The fossil was discovered by Adam Sedgewick in 1829 near Thickley, County Durham. I came across Sedgewick’s name when I walked the Dales Way last year. His name is commemorated on a large stone in the village of Dent where he was born (see Dales Way - Delightful Dentdale)

The Crystals and Gems gallery was next door to the Fossils. I was particularly impressed by the gypsum desert rose. This was a cluster of wafer thin, sharp edged ‘petals’ that looked as though they had been coated in sand.

Ice Age To Iron Age

It seems amazing to me that artefacts from human civilisation can still be found from thousands of years ago. Some of the tools and weapons on display looked as though they had been made yesterday. I was most impressed by the replica skeleton of the Giant Irish Deer. These beasts were twice as big as the deer that we see today. A large size had an evolutionary advantage during the Ice Age so that more body fat could be stored. 

Ancient Egyptians

There was a wide collection of Ancient Egyptian artefacts on display. My attention was first drawn to a replica of the Rosetta Stone. Napoleon's troops unearthed the basalt stone in Rosetta in Egypt in 1799. The stone had the same text inscribed on it in Greek, Demotic (an Egyptian shorthand)  and Egyptian Hieroglyphs. This enabled Hieroglyphs to be deciphered and ultimately gave us access to their Ancient Egyptian language. The Frenchman Jean-Francois Champollion was the first to decipher them in 1822. 

I was intrigued by an exhibit that looked like a pair of glasses. I was pretty sure Ancient Egyptians didn’t have glasses; at least I’d not seen any in their hieroglyphs. They turned out to be eye inlays made of copper and stone and would have been attached to a coffin or coffin mask, or even put over the real eyes of a mummified person. They were thought to protect the dead person in their journey through the afterlife. 

It was hard to ignore the mummified Ibis. This specimen was found in a tomb in Egypt in the late 1800s. John Hancock unwrapped it from its bandages and reassembled the skeleton with its remaining internal organs. 

Anglo Saxons

The Anglo Saxon gallery displayed the cross head and shaft section of the Rothbury Cross. It’s one of the finest surviving pieces of Anglo-Saxon sculpture from Northumbria. The cross was made about 100 years after the Lindisfarne Gospels (715-720 AD). The gospels were created by the monk Eadfrith and were produced in honour of St Cuthbert. 

End Of The Day

I spent a full day in the museum which just goes to show how many items they exhibit. I was impressed by the diverse nature of the galleries. I liked the way they had areas that had a local flavour too such as the natural history of Northumbria. Whenever I felt I was flagging, I retreated to the café on the first floor that had decent drinks and a selection of food. The museum also has a Planetarium, but I wasn't sure whether it was running whilst I was there since it was cordoned off. Overall, I thought the museum was incredible value given that it was free entry. Having said that, I always make a donation to these places that have free entry. Oddly enough, I usually end up spending more money in those places that are free, than those where you have to pay a fee up front.