Things that Go Bump in the Night
We were welcomed with a cup of tea and biscuit whilst Alan Price the Curator of
Natural History described how the Exhibition had been set up to cover things that go bump in the night, supposed
haunting and some oil paintings.
A corner of the gallery had been set up as a brewery back yard with beer barrels and crates.
There was a fox, mice, rats. cockroaches and hedgehogs. To one side Alan had set up a video, showing black rats at play.
Next display was a badger set, which contained tunnels for children to crawl through which contained alcoves
contains various animals. To the side of the badger set there was a model wolf which had been made from leather and there was a display of nocturnal animals including a badger which we could touch.
Alan then showed us his wild life tanks which contained frogs and he fed them some live crickets because they are very particular about what they eat. When he first set up the tank he had left a small gap at the top which the crickets had found and they hid up there so that the frogs could not reach them.
Alan bought in crickets and then bred them. There was a lizard in a tank which Alan had borrowed from the Bolton reptile rescue centre.
At the next section we saw a painting of Thomas
Henshaw and also the Blue Coat School in
Oldham which he founded. It is suggested that he still haunts the building originally housing the school.
We went back down to the education suite, enjoyed another cup of tea and biscuit and were treated to an hilarious talk by Alan about wild life and handled some specimens. He told us that his interest in bugs etc started when he was a child. His father was a master baker and turned off the lights in the store to show his young family how the cockroaches came out at night in the dark.
Ann gave us an audio description as we went around and the gallery staff ensured that there were chairs for us as we visited each section. A most enjoyable visit and our thanks to all involved in setting up access for us.
Posted by Ken and Elaine
