Page 90 - MERCIAN Eagle 2019

Freedom Parades
The museum and RHQ has hosted two major military events this year and gave full hospitality to participants. The first event was the long- overdue H.M.S. Albion Freedom of the City of Chester march on the 29th September and the second likewise a Freedom of the City parade, for the Queens Own Yeomanry, which was held on the 12th October. At the H.M.S. Albion parade, the Band of the Royal Marines used the Club area of the building and museum rooms to prepare beforehand.
The museum came to the aid of the Navy
when it was found that they had not brought glasses to use for the pre-parade traditional drink of Port to toast Her Majesty. Glasses were acquired from our friends over at The Eagle public house behind the Museum. The parade went well and crew from the Albion marched through the city to a reception at Chester Town Hall attended by the Princess Royal, who inspected the crew and gave a speech to all assembled from the upper steps of the Town Hall. All went well as it did for the Yeomanry parade.
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THE MERCIAN EAGLE
Cheshire Military Museum
Over the past year the museum has continued to host events for a number of schools throughout the area. Alex Clark, our Museum Attendant, and volunteer Simon gave primary school children rudimentary lessons in the museum yard on how to extinguish German incendiary bombs with a WW2 stirrup pump and buckets of water. The WW2 Homefront activity days seem popular
with the young students. Among those schools
the Museum shop. Units from the Armed Forces paid visits. These included members from the Mercian Territorials, the 75th Engineer Regiment based in Warrington and several Army Cadet Detachments.
We have mounted several temporary exhibitions this year, the most successful being an exhibition to commemorate the Anniversary of the Normandy Landings 6th June 1944. Almost everyone full-time and volunteer here at
visiting were Frodsham Manor, Primary School, Upton Westlea School, the Grange Primary School, Winsford, and Macclesfield Old Sun School to name but a few. Support to universities and schools hasn’t stopped at just visits, the museum has opened its doors and has given placements
Wolverham
to university students and
week-long work experience
placements, as well to school pupils coming up to school leaving age.
Guide tours and talks are regularly on the agenda from a wide number of groups and organisations. This year we have played host to groups from the Blind Veterans Organisation, the Roslyn Care Home and Heritage Family History groups composed of members of the University of the Third Age. The United Kingdom Language College, based here in Chester, were frequent visitors with large groups of Language students from Italy and Spain who were top customers in
and Donkeys charity. Paintings of an equestrian theme were donated by various artists throughout the country and these were auctioned off on a Saturday evening to raise money for this deserving charity. The auctioneer on the night was Adam Partridge of televisions ‘Flog It’ and ‘Bargain Hunt’ fame, earlier in the day a volunteer who raises money on behalf of the Brooke organisation set off from the Museum pulling a trailer which he was to pull almost three hundred miles along a canal towpath route to Salisbury to raise awareness of the charities work.
...how to extinguish German incendiary bombs with a WW2 stirrup pump and buckets of water
the Museum played a part in the exhibitions set up. Other exhibitions were mounted on the Army Medical Services and our current now running exhibition focuses on 1939 and the ‘Phoney War’ period.
On the 28th September the Museum hosted and auction event on behalf of the Brooke Action, a Working Horses
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