| This year’s exhibition focused on
various time periods of Cheshire history using a “time clock”
compass design to guide the public to the appropriate areas. Small
information panels then told a “tall Tale” of Fantasy
about the items displayed there, followed by the often-surprising
truth.
The Stone Age was represented by ten of the oldest man made objects
in Cheshire and an extremely rare positive footprint of the Cheshire
dinosaur “Chirotherium” which the public were able to
touch. The facts here told how we were not under ice during the
Ice Age and that the footprints were not “dragons” as
once thought! A cabinet of later Stone Age tools from the region
was also on display showing just how clever our “primitive
ancestors really were.
The Bronze Age was represented by a private collection of bronze
tools donated by a metal detector and a collection of coins from
the period including what is thought to be a British copy of a Greek
coin for 650BC. Clearly the Romans did not introduce metal working
or coinage to Britain. We were already ‘doing it for ourselves’.
Rome and the Dark Ages were covered by information panels exclusively
revealing the recently discovered location of Roman and Danelaw
fortifications in north Cheshire. The legend of Joesph of Arimathea
and the Appleton Thorn, and the carved Viking ‘Cadishead Stones’.
All surprising facts in themselves!
Medieval and Tudor times were revealed in the CWP Archaeology excavation
reports and finds from moated sites in the Mersey Valley, many of
which were displayed in a large floor cabinet. The civil War in
Cheshire was re-created with a cabinet of reproduction equipment
of the period and the dates of many unknown and surprising battles
fought on Cheshire soil.
Commonwealth, Georgian and the Industrial Age were covered by more
excavation finds and a giant cabinet display of over 100 Alice in
Wonderland books connected through the Victorian and British Empire
periods to 20th Century and Modern Times, where Cheshire history
and legends appeared in rare copies of books by regional authors
and a brand new ‘Celtic Well’ stage set complete with
gargoyles. Here we discovered that the real Alice was not a cute
blonde teenager in a blue dress, that Arthur’s sword may indeed
have emerge from a stone and that fantasy stories often contain
a great deal more hidden truth than we think.
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Archaeology
