Behind the scenes

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Dora research revealed

Thanks to the amazing Gardens Trust a summary of my four year research surrounding botanist and mountain climber Miss Stafford can be found at their new history hub.

Miss Dora Stafford - The Gardens Trust

Miss Dora Stafford was admired in 1930s society gossip columns but scandalised newspaper editors with her ‘solo’ plant hunting exploits at t

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Voices from the Box

As a researcher I sometimes get ambushed by voices from the past. This happened to me on my visit to the Mass Observation papers at the Keep archive in Sussex. This is part of research for an exhibition for the Royal College of Physicians. Thanks to anonymous observers I heard 1940s vocal working-class opinions about the dreaded panel doctors contrasting with medics feeling threatened by talk of the NHS steaming its way through parliament despite being in the middle of a War. All from a card box crammed with handwritten and typed papers from 83 years ago…

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Say Hello 26, Wave Goodbye 25

That was a bizarre year from a work point of view. For the first 8 months no work, except being ghosted several times by potential heritage employers (this is the state of empathy-less HR, such a big problem). To keep my moral up I discovered swimming. I also dabbled in creative writing and found I had a thing for inventing comedy dialogue and veering into fantasy. And my hobby research, into Miss Stafford of Peru, helped keep my archive research and presentation skills active.

Surprise in August (usually a dead work period) came flying in an offer for temp work for Cranleigh Cottage Hospital heritage project, followed by the job offer from Royal College of Physicians. Now I am dipping into fascinating hidden medical history with yet more archive visits. And I also rediscovered my local beach which is best to visit when its cold and windswept to clear the cobwebs (see above). To sum up dear reader, as John McClane shouted many times: "YIPPEE-KI-YAY, motherf*****s!" :)

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Our Cottage In the Middle of the Street

After over 2 years’ worth of networking, negotiating, drafting, meetings, banging of heads the refurb for the Cranleigh Cottage Hospital has started. This was the UKs first ever cottage hospital pioneered by Doctor Napper. All thanks to a large Lottery Heritage grant. I am going  into volunteer coordinator mode this month to help new researchers. Meanwhile…I might have another part-time job….

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Wood and Tin

New experiment in my face-to-face talks. Using props like these two. A modern plywood plant press and a late Victorian tinplate vasculum (which I did a bit of paint DIY during the hot summer). The best bit is to allow the audience to feel these objects to understand what a planthunter carried or their local guides carried.

Following a question in my last Open Heritage Day event I am now investigating the clothes worn by the extreme female mountaineers of the 1930s who climbed more than 15,000 feet...

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Rhubarb Rhubarb

I was surprised at I walked past the Regency buildings near London’s Regents Park to find this massive Rhubarb plant from Tibet. It is in fact part of a living medicinal display created by the garden team at the Royal College of Physicians (RCP). It echoes the 1618 ‘Pharmacopoea Londinensis’  which listed medicinal plants authorised by the RCP only to the early doctors which was printed in Latin to prevent the common people gaining knowledge. Then 30 years later Nicholas Culpeper published an unofficial English translation with far more explanations about preparing medicines which led to his famous book ‘Culpeper’s Herbal’.

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Ding-a-ling

The best intergenerational interactive? Try HMS Cavalier's 1940s battleship bell at the Historic Dockyards at Chatham. I could hear this all day on my sunny visit at this huge heritage site in north Kent, UK. Most adults had a quick go when their children were not looking!

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Discover the Vasculum

Many people do not realise that until the 1940s any proper Western plant hunter/ eco-pirate would have a strange long tin cylinder strapped around them as they marched up mountains, like the one in photo I managed to find.  This is the VASCULUM – coming from the Latin ‘small vessel’. It was an essential item to have in these expeditions to protect the new plants that had been cut fresh before the plant hunters got to their base camp to squeeze flat the speciums into wooden presses. These days, botanists tell me they use plastic Tupperware boxes instead of these amazing metal containers.

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I Love the Herbarium

I am in love with the Herbarium archive @ Kew Botanical Gardens. It is the Tardis containing millions of plant secrets. Rather than just looking at digital images the curator found physical evidence of plants that Dora Stafford had collected from 1930s Peru. We went upstairs and downstairs exploring well-lit corridors full of cupboards of pressed flowers, seeds, sketches collected around the world for over 200 years. Just Wow.  

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Dora is back!

Thanks to wow letters and old newspapers found online, and visiting botanical archives, I can now reveal some of the jigsaw story about Dora Stafford.

Who she? The only British female plant-hunter of 1930s, working in southern Peru. But there are still pieces of her story missing. I am experimenting with a pilot talk using the primary source material I found so far.

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A Bit of Chelsea

Oooo I love a peek behind the scenes of how artists work. On a visit to Tate Britain I saw the Turner display, slightly tedious, but then I found this old bit of wood. I was impressed by how all the oil pigments were moved about by the great showman. Reminded me of a hyper toddler doing hand painting. This is nicknamed the 'Chelsea palette' when Turner was living next to the River Thames at Chelsea in London around the 1840s.

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Ready to Research?

In this photo are my tools when I visited Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew archives. Wow moments, when reading a mountain of papers and scribbles, included finding at the back of a folder a delicate tiny pressed flower from #Peru! All towards a public talk about a remarkable plant hunter Dora Stafford, who has been ignored by historians so far. All for the The Gardens Trust , date and venue to be announced soon…

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Whoosh! And away they go!

After 8 months research and networking off go my activity and intepretation plans for Cranleigh Hertage Trust to Lottery Heritage HQ. All to save this wee 15th century cottage in Cranleigh in Surrey that has an important forgotten story about the origins of cottage hospitals. And now, for something else...

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Power of Emojis

After two months of testing display ideas and activties with young people for Cranleigh Heritage Trust I found the power of emojis. Very useful as quick scoring method after solo workshops; and to share with group and my clients.

The photo shows a draft version which I then add more text and images. You can also spot some of the most popular hands-on activities to explain building history and, ahem, Victorian amputations.

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Creating timelines

This a peek at my first attempt at designing a timeline with Adobe InDesign. As the title says it's still a work in progress.

This is for Cranleigh Heritage Trust towards volunteer research about the 15th century building that was once the Cranleigh Cottage Hospital.

I came across 4 different bullet point timelines by previous researchers (who used bullet point format) and pulled it together using Victorian objects and relevant local images from Surrey History Centre, with fact checking by local historians.

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Books and Lemonade

from Social History Curators Group newsletter Spring 2024

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Pointing to the Pond

On a day trip to Littlehampton beach, I found six wonderful Oyster Way Markers by Gordon Young and Brian Fell. Not only are they tactile, with chunky metal oyster shells, they also have a useful fish menu carved in granite.

They were commissioned by the local council to reflect the original use of the nearby boating pond. It was in fact an 18th century oyster pond. Another wow fact is that Gordon Young designed the massive and stunning Comedy Carpet on Blackpool Promenade.