Page 21 - RADC 2015

REGIMENTAL
The Army Medical Services Museum Update
Colonel (Ret’d) JQ Anderson
In terms of change they say that a day is a long time in politics; well for the AMS Museum the year since the last update has certainly been a very long time! In the last Bulletin we were looking forward to the results of our Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) bid to underpin the funding for our build of a combined museum just outside Whittington Barracks with our “Front
Line Project” partners The Staffordshire Yeomanry Museum,
The Staffordshire
Regiment Museum
with their advice on, and our vision for, increasing public footfall, research potential, access, outreach activities and long term nancial sustainability, the Board of Trustees have been actively seeking a new, wider partnership. The present strategy is to look for a partnership with a major city council and to-date locations such as Birmingham, York, Cardiff, Southampton and Liverpool have or are being scoped and discussions
Museum exhibit – Dental Of cer with a Parachute Field Ambulance surgical team administering a GA – Arnhem 1944© AMS Museum
Despite some dif culties and disappointments work at the museum has continued with new exhibits such as the Battle of Waterloo (200th anniversary) being completed and, of particular relevance to the Corps, the Friends of the Museum hosted the lecture “British Dental Surgery and the First World War: The treatment of jaw injuries from the battle eld to the home front” by Kristin Hussey at their AGM in October
and the BBC’s “Celebrity Antiques Road Trip” visited the Museum in the Summer
to examine some of the dental artefacts
and discover the story of Capt JM Green
AD Corps and his role in passing coded messages back to MI9 whilst he was a PoW in Germany. Their visit was screened by BBC2 on 17 November 2015.
The continued success of the museum through an unusually dif cult year has been due to the dedication and hard work of the depleted permanent staff and the support of the Friends and willing volunteers. Despite the changes and delays in the plans for relocation, work will continue in seeking a new, appropriate and sustainable home whilst internally, under the new Director, the museum will continue to evolve its exhibition storyline whilst further developing its wider community outreach and involvement. Any past or present Corps member would be welcome to help in any of this work as a museum volunteer whether you could help on a regular basis or on a more ad-hoc arrangement as and when possible. You may also, or alternatively, wish to add your support by joining the Friends of the AMS Museum where any member of the Corps, serving or retired, would be most welcome. All contact details are available on the
AMS Museum web-site: http://www.ams- museum.org.uk .
The museum tells your story – please support it in any way you can by donation of your time, artefacts, articles, or even money!
All photographs courtesy of the AMS Museum
and the Mercian
Regiment Museum.
Our bid was ‘strongly
supported’ by the
HLF and made it
through to the nal
short list of applications. Unfortunately funding was only available to cover the three top applications and our bid fell
just short of this mark. The HLF provided some extremely useful and constructive feedback for the Project Board to consider and which the HLF felt would further strengthen our case in any resubmission. Whilst our bid was strongly supported, for the HLF, our main strength, by far, lay in the ‘medical’ aspects of our proposals and they were less supportive of the inclusion of large areas of ‘regimental’ material which they felt, whilst important to include, should be reduced in size. With, at 60%, the AMS Museum already being the major stakeholder in the partnership signi cant further reduction in the other 3 museums 40% combined share would leave them in an untenable position and possibly worse off than their current situation.
By mutual agreement, therefore, the four museum partnership “The Front Line Project” was dissolved.
Spurred on by the HLF’s supportive comments for our aim to rebrand as “The National Museum of Military Medicine” along
Dental Of cer outside his Dental Department – Gallipoli 1915© AMS Museum
The museum tells your story – please support it
are underway. Meanwhile our
current home in Keogh Barracks
is secure for the moment. Plans to sell off the barracks have been shelved and 4 Medical Regiment
has now reoccupied part of the site and will shortly be joined by 22 Field Hospital. This, however, does not alter the need for the museum to nd a new home. The current accommodation is old with signi cant infrastructure problems which potentially risk the integrity and survivability of parts
of the museum’s collection. In addition it
is too small for purpose with inadequate exhibition space, scattered, off site storage for much of the collection some of which
are also at risk due to poor environmental conditions in some of the storage areas. Space for research activities, visitor groups, temporary exhibitions, conservation, staff working areas and shop is all extremely limited. Our location ‘behind the wire’ presents a signi cant barrier to wider public access as does it’s ‘off the beaten track’ location in Mytchett. In effect, the current accommodation and location actively works against the museum in most critical areas and positively curtails all ambition to become self-sustaining and reach full potential: in short it severely threatens the museum’s long term survival.
Internally, the museum has also faced signi cant upheaval: after only a year in post, the Director resigned in the summer and
we were fortunate to be able to secure the part-time services of the previous director, Pete Starling, to see us through the inter- regnum whilst a new director was recruited. The new Director, Jason Semmens, starts his handover in December and will be fully established in post at the start of the New Year. We also lost our shop assistant but fortunately that post has now been lled and the new incumbent will also be in post at the start of the New Year.
RADC BULLETIN 2015 19