Author Archives: Guy Hunt

Highlights – Sunday

After the light rain showers on Saturday, Sunday was bright and clear. We opened the Museum up at 10AM and we were receiving the last few visitors as we were packing away the displays at 5PM. We’ll have some visitor numbers for you at some point, but anecdotally I can tell you that we had hundreds of visitors on the Sunday.

On a personal note, it was lovely to be able to relax and sit back and watch the Museum in full working order. Saturday was quite a stressful day because in the morning I was still very busy getting things set up for the afternoon opening, so it was nice to sit down in the sun on Sunday and eat some of our lovely “Roman” ice-cream (Lavender and Honey flavour made especially for HIPUM by Tim) and watch the happy visitors coming and going.

The morning sun casting a HIPUM logo onto the floor of the barn.

Everything set up and ready to receive our visitors.

Visitors on Sunday morning

Early morning visitors to the Museum

Explaining the artefacts to a visitor in the finds handling displays

Visitors watching the 16mm HIEP film. You can watch it here.

The museum shop ready to give out hand-outs, sell the book, tickets for tours, postcards, pin badges etc…

Tony and Grahame’s new book on sale at the shop.

Highlights – 16mm Film 1977 & 1978

We edited this film of the Hayling Island Excavation Project’s 1977 and 1978 seasons. The original 16mm film was transferred to VHS and then to DVD. We took the DVD and extracted the files, made some basic edits and added the captions.

Personally I think it gives a lovely insight into the project and gives a great feel for how it was to be on the original excavation. It also raises some interesting issues about how we might think of using video as a recording technique on excavation projects today.

Highlights – Tours

We took guided 6 tours from the Museum HQ to the temple site. The tours were guided by Tony and Grahame who were able to talk to visitors about the site in general and also their excavations in the 1970s and 1980s. The visitors posed lots of interesting questions that the guides did a great job of answering.

Because the Museum was based at Northney Farm, we were able to make use of the farm’s special “people trailer” which can seat up to 30 people and has a roof so that the tours could go ahead even during the rain showers we experienced.

The Wilson family from Stoke Fruit Farm very kindly let us take the tractor right into the pea field. The trailer was able to stop within the temple compound between the Cella and the main entrance to the temple.

Many thanks to Tim Pike and Chris Mansell for driving the tractor and Jacko (Paul Jackson) for marshalling the tours so that nobody missed their trip and everyone got on and off safely.

Visitors aboard the trailer ready to go.

Jacko waves off the tour

The trailer sets off in the direction of the temple.

Tony presenting the first tour, point out the very visible mark in the pea crop.

Tony presenting the first tour, pointing out the very visible mark in the pea crop.

Grahame presenting a tour

Grahame pointing out the crop marks. The photo has a slight safari feel to it, but there are no big beasts in the pea field.

Highlights – Saturday

We’ve had a couple of days to: recover, take stock, download photos, mop up the spilled ice-cream and generally clear things away after HIPUM and so it seemed like a good time to post some highlights of the weekend.

We have had incredibly positive feedback about the event and it is lovely to say that we received no negative feedback at all. The museum was really well attended, tours were full, the evening event was a sell out.

Coming up in the next few posts, we’ll have highlights from Sunday, the tours, the evening event and more. For now, here are some highlights from Saturday.

We put up signs in the morning to help people find their way around the walking tour.

Tony and Lisa are making last minute preparations. Amending and reprinting captions for the displays live on site (Saturday AM).

Our finds handling displays set up and ready for visitors to arrive.

Despite a few rain showers, everything went ahead as planned.

The museum reception and shop were under cover in the “bike shed”. Volunteers are helping visitors find their way around.

Doors open on Saturday for the displays in the barn. Our lovely logo by the door!

Friday Morning – Assembling Display Units

Over at #HIPUM HQ there are scenes of industrious activity: cutting, fixing, stapling… as our display units are being assembled. The design is intended to be lightweight and easy to recycle or up-cycle. The materials used are mostly recycled plywood offcuts and corrugated cardboard. The only expensive item is the acrylic sheet (AKA Perspex) that will cover some of the more delicate artefacts.

Here are a few pictures to show you the making process. After the event, we’ll be up-cycling some of our units to make more permanent display units, re-using what we can and the cardboard will be recycled.

If anyone wants 3 sheets of barely used 6mm Perspex (A1 sized) please get in touch!

Assembling the display units.

Prefabricated legs read to install

Screwing together the plywood structure

… and installing the cardboard decks.

Tony’s Finds Delivery

We’re very excited to say that we’ve taken delivery of our first batch of finds for #HIPUM. There will be more to come, but today Tony came down to #HIPUM HQ with a lot of the bulkier heavier items. You can see some mysterious photos of the artefacts below.

To find out what’s in the boxes, you’ll have to come along to the Museum this weekend. We will have some great finds on display from the Iron Age, Roman and Saxon phases of the temple site. Some finds are too fragile to handle, but we’ll also let our visitors get their hands on some of the finds. We’ll have archaeologists on site to answer all your questions about the finds.

A mystery finds box… do you know what it is yet?

Interesting artefacts in their bags…

A piece of temple and other finds boxes

A Sacred Island – The Book

We’re really pleased to say that Tony and Grahame have produced a brand new book about the Hayling Island Temple site. The book is called “A Sacred Island” and will be available from the #HIPUM museum shop. After the Museum is over, the book will be available from bookshops and from the Tea Room at the farm.

Here are the front and back covers of the book. To find out what’s inside, make sure you come along to the HIPUM on the 27th or 28th July to pick up your copy. In addition Tony and Grahame will be presenting their work and signing copies of the book at a world exclusive lecture on Saturday the 27th at HIPUM. To book one of the remaining tickets, either go to the Northney Farm Tea Room or email us at: hipum@lparchaeology.com

Cover of the new booklet by Tony and Grahame

… and the back cover.

Making of the HIPUM Logo Stencils

There was general excitement this morning at L – P : Archaeology HQ because our #HIPUM stencils have arrived. We’re going to be using these to make signs for visitors to the museum as well as branding our display cases and stuff.

The logo was designed by Joca Yamamoto. It is based on the floor plan of the Roman phase of the temple, cleverly adapted to work as a stencil. The HIPUM letters have also been incorporated. The diagonal alignment is inspired by the famous air photo of the site.

The logo has been water-jet cut onto plastic by a mystery volunteer (we owe you a beer!). We took a few photos of the stencils to show you all how cool they look. Come along to the museum on the 27th or 28th to see what the results look like. We got one version of the logo lasercut on aluminium so that we can put it up on the wall afterwards.

The #HIPUM logo in aluminium.

Nice wrapping paper, it must be Xmas…

Stencils stacked up on top of each other.

We got the HIPUM initials done as well.

N&Q: Talfourd Ely

This post in our “Notes & Queries” series takes a look at Dr. Talfourd Ely who excavated at the temple site over 100 years ago.

Talfourd Ely was a classicist and archaeologist who taught Latin and other classical languages at University College London. His obituary in the science journal Nature gives some interesting details of his life and career, as well mentioning an interesting sounding episode involving his routing of “brigands” at Olympia during a trip to Greece.

Talfourd Ely wrote a short article on the Antiquities of Hayling Island in volume 55 of The Archaeological Journal published in 1898. The article text is available in full from the Archaeology Data Service: { link to PDF }. In the article he describes his first visit to Hayling in the late 1860s and relates how he became aware of the temple site.

Excavation on the site began in 1897 and went on, on a seasonal basis, for the next five years or so. To find out more about what Talfourd Ely found, and what he thought it was, please come along to the Museum on the 27th of 28th.

In the meantime, here are a few images of Talfourd Ely and his excavations to have a look at:

Portrait of Dr. Talfourd Ely

A photograph of the 1901 excavations.

Awaiting the train at North Hayling Halt

Papers from Grahame

In this post in our “making of HIPUM” series we take a look at some of the materials we are working with to produce new displays for the museum. Grahame Soffe dropped off a big stack of papers from his collection. These materials relate to the excavations that have been done on the temple site.

This set of documents contains all sorts of nuggets including: materials relating to Talfourd Ely and his excavations at the start of the 20th century; copies of amazing air photos of the 1970s excavations of the site; press cuttings from The News and other local newspapers.

Here are a few snippets to whet your appetites… come along to the museum to find out more about these excavations, the archaeologists and much more on the 27th and 28th of July.

Images from the 1970s excavations

Air photo of the 1970s excavations

Images of Talfourd Ely and his excavations

H I P U M

Hayling Island Pop-up Museum