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When I was very young, I have a couple of distinct memories that have since faded somewhat, but they are still there and appear when something triggers them. The trigger in this instance was my stumbling on the IndieWeb Carnival March 2026 : Museum Memories. It was going to about one of those memories recanting my chance relationship to one of the most interesting museums in the UK, the Science Museum in London. My elder brother was school friends with the son of the director of the Science Museum at that time, and a memory of our two families strawberry picking and then eating lunch at their house. It was where I first tasted Spaghetti Bolognaise. The memories came flooding back to me when I read the subject.¹ But I think a more interesting story about my memories of a museum is to be told.

I grew up in the 70s on a modest housing estate in the West Midlands that was located not too far from what has been called the Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Throughout my early years, it was common to have it drilled into us that Ironbridge and the surrounding area was the most important site of industrialisation in the entire world.² There are several sites, museums, and artefacts that testament to the history of the area that we could avoid nor miss. However, like most kids of a young age, I grew up with a complex mixture of pride, interest, and total ambivalence to the evidence that was within my field of view permanently. Sure, some of it was interesting, and it got us out of school on a number of occasions to benefit for some fresh air, but historical acts of smelting iron ore were not the kind of thing this young lad was interested in.

But from a very early age, I got to experience the entire museum complex, not as a visitor or patron, but as a result of other circumstances. Allow me to explain.

Before I entered infants school, my mother had struck up a friendly relationship with the potter at Blists Hill, part of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum, some time before its opening in 1973. She was a creative soul, with much place in her life for the enjoyment of expressing that creativity. We would often walk down to the museum, following the back roads, through woodland pathways built on old mining slag heaps, round the back of the posh people’s houses and down the hill to spend a few hours in the pottery. Probably a good fifteen-twenty minute walk. Once onsite, I was given a lot of freedom to roam around and look at the various shops and interests of the site, and then we’d go home for lunch. The site, it is a reproduction victorian village, with shops, banks, and other artefacts that faithfully recreate the era. It was fairly rudimentary in those days, having not long opened, but quickly developed into one of those rare but popular destinations where you get to not only see, but touch, smell and really feel the past.

Roy, the potter, was a very kind man. He’d known me before I could walk, and later as I was a little older, he let me run around the pottery as long as I didn’t go near the ovens! He took time to show me how everything worked, giving me lessons on spinning, glazing, and firing. It was fascinating because it was real. Physical. Tangible. It was the job, of course. Something he’d do for paying visitors, but I could tell he did it for the pure joy of being able to transfer his skill and knowledge. He is a skilled potter and had no trouble selling his creations. He still works as a potter to this day.

A few years later, I’d grown a little, and was now struggling in secondary education (for reasons), but had one thing that I could do well without constantly fighting against myself. Music became a central part of me and, most probably, a life-saver. That love for music started as a youngster, my mother would take me and my siblings to the “big school” on Saturday mornings to make bamboo recorders. Spending weeks cutting, filing, drilling and carefully placing a piece of gently cut cork to make a sound that was all of your doing was enchanting. Several weeks would then be spent attempting to tune the recorder, all while learning to play basic music. I learned about music at this stage, and it affected me profoundly. From a failed attempt to learn the violin, through the bamboo pipes, I eventually fell in love with an unassuming brass instrument, the B♭Cornet. I became a very good player for my age, and had a very good maitrise of three variations of the instrument. The Cornet, an E♭Soprano Cornet —which is much harder to play—, and a B♭Trumpet. I became one of the key players in the school band, sharing “principal” responsibilities for a number of years. The school band gained a notoriety, and we were often playing around the country on weekends, in a sponsorship with British Rail (back when it was a company for public good) in various towns and cities, including the local museum sites in Ironbridge. I got to see the museum once again for free, but in very different circumstances. The various sites of the museum hold a special place in my memories of a time that things were not always plain sailing.

I now live many millions of metres from the museum, but I do think about how much the museum has been present at various stages of my life.