A drain inspection cover

What a utilitarian item! It is a rectangle of sturdy cast steel that can, with the right tool, be lifted to allow access to a drain. It would have been in a place where drain rods or something more po...

Gye’s Yard in 1906

These days an interesting development of houses is known as Gye’s Old Yard. But of course, Gye’s Yard was where the family firm of builders, carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights etc. actually wor...

Gye’s Yard

  From time to time a really lovely photo turns up at Market Lavington Museum and this one, just given to us, is a wonderful record of a part of the village, as it once was. It’s an aerial ph...

Moving an organ

We have seen Hopkins invoices before on this blog. This one is the February 1911 account rendered to West Lavington Church. . For £1 – 8 – 6 Mr Hopkins cut along the floor, removed the organ for...

Building the Vestry

Here we show another recent photographic gift to the museum which Easterton Jim has got named for us. Here’s the original photo. It shows Easterton’s St Barnabas Church having the vestry built ...

Making good at Clyffe Hall

For much of the second half of the nineteenth century, the Hon Louisa Hay, a Bouverie by birth, lived in family property – Clyffe Hall. Like any house, this one needed repairs from time to time, bo...

Building the Vestry

Photos and postcards of the church are very common items. Inside and outside of St Mary’s  have both been well documented by photographers over the last 130 years or so. Mostly, they document a ver...

Building the Viaduct – a photo by Alf Burgess.

The Market Lavington railway line was a late bit of railway building – being completed in 1900 and opened for passenger trains on 1st October of that year. We have already seen that local photograph...

Tarmaccing a drive

Our curator recently had his drive resurfaced. After 60 years of use the surface was worn, large puddles formed in places and then filled with mud. Weeds took hold and they added to the surface damage...

An Apprenticeship Indenture

When a youngster was bound apprentice, the seriousness of the commitment was emphasised by the legal nature of the apprenticeship document. At Market Lavington Museum we have been pleased, recently, ...