Thread by @holland_tom

We arrive in Devizes to visit @WiltshireMuseum - which very much does what it says on the tin.

The museum was opened in 1874, & is run by the Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Society, which was founded 21 years previously (making it almost as old as @sussex_society!)

The county archaeological societies are one of the glories of England - but COVID is having a devastating impact on them. The best way to help the society of my native county is to visit @WiltshireMuseum: an absolute treasure trove of finds & wonders from across Wiltshire.

Horatio: a sad but evocative memorial of Devizes’ past. Once thought to have been shot in the Cape in 1800, but probably a circus lion, he was used as a display in a shop window, paraded annually during the 30s in the Devizes carnival, & used to raise money to fund 2 Spitfires.

As befits a museum that is itself part of Wiltshire’s history, @WiltshireMuseum boasts at least 2 ghosts: Maud Cunnington, the formidable archaeologist who dug at Woodhenge & across Wiltshire, & was the first woman to serve as the Society’s president, & a mysterious little girl.

A jadeite axe (4000 BC-ish): fashioned in the Alps, brought to Wiltshire via Brittany, & then deposited in the River Avon.

Found in 2003. The discoverer tried to use it to open a letter, couldn’t, & angrily threw it out of a window - hence the chip... #WiltshireMuseum.

Bones found in the West Kennet Long Barrow, which may have been a necklace, but more probably - & excitingly - was a kind of instrument: designed to be swung over the head as a bull-roarer. #WiltshireMuseum

Ripple-flaked flint arrowhead, Neolithic, found at Marden Henge in 2010. A stunning example of Wiltshire workmanship! #WiltshireMuseum

“The best beaker in Britain!” - David Dawson, director of @WiltshireMuseum, shows off the exquisite diamond design on this masterpiece of Beaker art

Bronze Age bead, found at Wilsford Barrow, just south of Stonehenge - the earliest piece of glass ever discovered in Britain! #WiltshireMuseum

Trumpet made from a human bone. The person whose bone it was made from seems to have been contemporaneous with the man the musical instrument was then buried with.

The Bush Barrow burial, Britain’s richest Bronze Age burial, found in 1808 - a brilliant example of how the discovery of Wiltshire’s history is itself a part of Wiltshire’s history. (The bones etc are a model of the original burial) #WiltshireMuseum

Dagger found in Bush Barrow, together with illustration showing what the handle looked when it was found in 1808. The design at the bottom was created from 1000s of tiny gold studs, each one a hair’s width, and now visible through the magnifying glass.

Gold from a tomb of a woman found with an amber necklace - evidence for long-distance trade with Scandinavia in the early Bronze Age.

@WiltshireMuseum has two-thirds of all the early Bronze Age gold ever found in Britain

Bronze Age horse harness, stabbed through with spears. The horse was presumably being ritually slaughtered; it was then dumped in the river Avon outside what would one day be Melksham, where in 1965 it would be dug up by a digger.

The Stonehenge Urn, found just off what is now the A303. It was filled with the ashes of numerous cremations. It was found in 1805 by William Cunnington, who is shown here with his daughter spiriting it triumphantly away.

(In reality, it’s way too heavy for a girl to carry.)

And so we reach the small palaeontological section of @WiltshireMuseum! These are the vertebrae of a plesiosaur, found in a railway aiding at Swindon...

Hippopotamus tusk & molar from Westbury. Wiltshire once teemed with megafauna: mammoths, bears, woolly rhinos, aurochs... #WiltshireMuseum

Fascinating example of an iron axe head made exactly as bronze axe heads had been made: a precious snapshot of how blacksmiths initially struggled to adapt to the onset of the Iron Age #WiltshireMuseum

Details from the Marlborough Bucket, a huge late Iron Age bucket made in northern Gaul, made up of staves of yew bound by decorated iron hoops.

West Saxon spearheads - some of them from Ebbesbourne Wake, home today of Wiltshire’s best pub, The Horseshoe #WiltshireMuseum

One of the earliest Saxon gold coins, dating from c. 675. The portrait is modelled on Carausius - the cross shows that the king who minted it was Christian.

West Saxon dagger, found with the body of its owner in a Neolithic long barrow outside Westminster. The man had been buried there some 4000 years after the barrow was built. #WiltshireMuseum

Viking stirrup #WiltshireMuseum

Britain’s earliest private telephone: constructed by Alfred Cunningham of Devizes. The line ran from Cunningham’s house to his family wine business at the far end of the street.

The first item owned by @WiltshireMuseum: a cabinet made in 1824 in the shape of one of the trilithons at Stonehenge, complete with a model of the stone circle on the top

The cabinet features what I’m guessing must be one of the first - if not THE first - aerial views of Stonehenge & Avebury #WiltshireMuseum

The incomparable library at @WiltshireMuseum, featuring first editions of the founding classics of antiquarian studies of Wiltshire

There is everything - EVERYTHING - in the collections of @WiltshireMuseum that the historian of Wiltshire could possibly want.

Sceptical members of @AuthorsCC will note that Fovant features...

Original edition of Stukeley’s famous Stonehenge: A Temple Restor’d to the British Druids, published in 1740, & given to the Wiltshire Archaeological Society in 1857.

Stukeley’s Stonehenge & Avebury

One final treasure in @WiltshireMuseum: a stained glass window by John Piper, commissioned in 1980, & featuring many of the treasures held by the Museum.