Wingfield Castle Community Handling Box

A need was identified to engage local people in Hartlepool with the story of the Wingfield Castle, and the plans to restore the vessel.

Museum of Hartlepool requested as part of this, support from Tees Valley Museums Group to develop an object handling box, and additional resources to engage a variety of audiences. The museum wanted this box to be accessible to older, adult audiences, and not a traditional museum loans box.

The idea was to use this resource in outreach and engagement work around the Wingfield Castle with the collections team, while the vessel cannot be physically accessed by the public.

The main theme and focus chosen for this resource is traditional skills linked to shipbuilding and the shipyards, which is linked to Hartlepool pride in the shipyard industry.

Other themes the Museum and the community group felt were important included:

• Shipbuilding, with reference to Gray & Co, where the Wingfield Castle was built
• Time spent on board the Wingfield, when it was an LNER ferry working the Humber
• Time spent on board the Wingfield during its time as a museum exhibit
• And the restoration work on the Wingfield using traditional skills

The museum and Tees Valley Museums Group felt it was important that this resource was co-created by local communities with links to Hartlepool.
We chose to work with a Andy’s Man Club, a men’s mental health group, who already had a strong relationship with Museum of Hartlepool, via work with the art gallery.

The group met over several months and explored the history of Shipbuilding in Hartlepool, the stories of local shipbuilder Sir William Gray, and of course the history of the Wingfield Castle. They were shown collections stores and asked to choose objects which they thought told the stories well.
They did object handling and even had a go at scanning original archival documents and photographs.

The group were given the unique opportunity to go onboard the Wingfield Castle during the project and see the vessel up close as inspiration. They took a lot of photographs and started to think about important elements to include in the box, for example,  they added some cups and plates used by the café during the time the vessel was open as a museum attraction to the public, as well as other items used to dress the vessel during its time as an exhibit.

There was a range of objects selected for the box by participants, including:

• A carefully selected group of tools used in the shipbuilding from the museum collection.
• Copies of photographs, plans and other shipbuilding related documents from the museum’s archive collection.
• Objects from the Wingfield during the vessels time as an open exhibit.
• Replica items such as flat caps, mini telegraph models, flags etc.
• Memorabilia linked to it’s history, such as a DVD of the Elephant Man, where the vessel was used as a filming location.

TVMG’s Cultural Participation and Community Curator also researched and created two Talking Tees Valley Packs, on The Wingfield Castle, and Shipbuilding in Hartlepool which have been added as resources to the box, as well as circulated to local care home professionals.

These packs can be downloaded below.
Talking Tees Valley Pack Shipbuilding Word File
Talking Tees Valley Pack Wingfield Castle Word File

Other resources, such as the ‘Shipyard Pub Quiz’ were created with the group, asking questions about topics they were most interested in.

There were also some personal touches added to this project.

The box itself was created by one of the members, who had a keen interest in woodwork and was inspired by the original toolbox on display in the museum.

Another member, who enjoys art, created his own artwork designed in the style of tattoo art, which incorporated elements he found most interesting during sessions.
He explained the details in a label for the piece which you can read below.

Wingfield Castle Artwork Label