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.

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.

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, 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.

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!