Two More Museums

The whole reason I went to Maidstone last week was to pay my respects to Ta-Kush, 'the Lady of the House, Daughter of Osiris' at the Museum. As I dripped my way through the rainy streets and finally found the Museum, I found a grand Tudor house - Chillington Manor, originally - a far more impressive setting than I envisaged, even if I quickly discovered that you don't go in here, but through a modern annexe at the side.

Like Hastings Town Museum which I visited last year, but on a bigger scale, Maidstone houses different collections of stuff which it's been given over the years, and what is in fact technically an entirely separate institution, the Royal West Kent Regimental Museum. There's the Bentlif Art Gallery, the Oyler Collection of Toys and Games, Lady Brabourn's Costume Collection, two distinct huge donations of Japanese artefacts, and the Brenchley Collection of South Sea Island ethnography. It's exhausting, and means that if you don't warm to one gallery there's always something different round a corner (and there are a lot of corners). When I visited there was also a temporary display 'I Grew Up 1980s' full of things I have disturbingly clear memories of as well as dark oak rooms full of dark oak furniture and suits of armour. I could have spent much longer here had I not already been a bit worn out by my trip to Knole House in the morning. And at the centre, in her own dark alcove - appropriately the former chapel of an almshouse - is Ta-Kush. They treat her kindly now, but she was cut about after being confiscated in 1820 by Customs & Excise as they checked her for smuggled goods. The children boggled at her, and I stood in silent salute. She has come all this way across time and space, as it were, to teach us about her vanished world. I didn't photograph her.

Then on Friday last week I was in London seeing my god-daughter to hear about the frustrations of life as a very junior civil servant living in the capital and a young Christian who can't find a local church where they don't worship a drum kit. I made a day of it by exploring the City of London Cemetery in Wanstead (which has a café!) and then dropping by at Hackney Museum. As far as you can get from the model of local history museum represented by Maidstone, Hackney's is one room (they have a gallery for temporary exhibitions, but it was closed when I went) under the borough library dating from 1999. Nobody has given them hundreds of oil paintings, Japanese sword hilts or Egyptian mummies; they don't have much, but they make what they have work hard. They focus, as far as possible, on the multifarious stories of the varied people who have made their home in this part of London over the centuries. There is the paraffin stove used by a West Indian couple in their rented room in the 1950s because the landlord turned the gas off at a certain point in the day. There's a net used to catch eels from the tank at the back of an eel-and-pie shop. There's a tiny artwork made by a schoolchild showing how their parents met. There is enormous compassion and commitment. And when I visited there were lots of children enjoying the games and toys for free, and some of the older ones even looking at the displays. 

Go and find your local museum. They're all gorgeous. Well, nearly all.