‘Trench!’
Trench Activity Day
As part of Bradford on Avon’s ‘Trench!’ exhibition, the museum hosted a superb World War I activity day in May at the library meeting room. Steve Williams, a WWI expert and his son, Gareth, gave talks throughout the day, dressed as WWI soldiers, with the aid of a mock up trench, willing volunteers and weapons including a Vickers gun. We had a steady flow of over 120 visitors- both adults and children- during the activity day, partly due to our WWI soldiers parading through Bradford on Avon drumming up support and advertising our event!
The ‘Trench!’ exhibition was run in conjunction with St Laurence School and the basis for the exhibition was a display of Year 9 History students’ WWI work. This included some very imaginative models of WWI trenches in a variety of different media- cardboard, cake(!) etc. together with WWI booklets and diaries written by the students and a selection of WWI posters. A fascinating evening talk by MOD archaeologist, Richard Osgood, ‘From Wollongong to Wiltshire to Wallonia: archaeology of the Great War’ was also held in the library.
The exhibition was very well received, judging by the positive comments left in our visitors’ book.