How Shrewsbury Castle is preparing to reopen: From cleaning artefacts to building new visitor interactive

As the military museum prepares to reopen on February 15, its staff and volunteers are hard at work cleaning priceless artefacts, processing recent donations, and building a new visitor interactive. 

The museum cares for nearly 14,000 objects linked to Shropshire’s army history, from a lock of Napoleon’s hair, to boots that trod the Normandy sand on D-Day (1944). Over half the collection is on display within the galleries, spaces in which the hubbub of engaged visitors has been replaced by the sounds of hoovering, sawing and drilling. 

Beneath the 17th century oak roof beams of the castle’s massive Great Hall, museum volunteer Eve uses a specialist conservation vacuum to carefully remove dust on textiles. Although the hoover has very delicate suction, a piece of old boxer shorts is placed over the nozzle when working with delicate textiles in case tiny fibres are drawn and lost into the vacuum cleaner!  

Before undertaking any cleaning such as dusting and polishing, the team assess the condition of each object: Does it need cleaning? Will cleaning remove valuable historical traces? Is it robust enough for the minimal treatment that can be provided in-house? Conservators are sought where cleaning treatment is beyond the museum’s resources.   

Despite the galleries bursting at the seams with metalled militaria, from brass buttons and helmets to steel weaponry, the iconic household metal polish Brasso is nowhere to be seen. Although Brasso is effective at removing tarnish from some metals, it is too abrasive for the museum. Peek is used, a less abrasive polish, but even with this, excessive use can damage metal items. 

Having said that, caring for museum objects on a day-to-day basis is not just about removing elements or limiting engagement with their surfaces. The museum uses ‘Renaissance Wax’, a product developed by the British Museum that enables a fine lustre on woods, metals and leathers and is good for de-griming, but crucially it provides a barrier to oxidation and corrosion – such as fingerprints. 

In the quiet of the East Tower, volunteers Caroline and Tony are busy reviewing the personal archive of Shrewsbury servicewoman Major Joan Crooke, a recent donation. From Valentine’s cards to correspondence between friends, Tony and Caroline are working to understand the contents of Joan’s archive so they can organise and record it in a systematic way - a task known in museums as ‘cataloguing.’

Cataloguing is crucial to the museum’s operation, as it ensures the collections are easily accessible to both the public and the museum team. The closure period enables the team to catch up and get ahead on jobs like cataloguing, they’ll be better prepared to process accepted donations in a timely manner over the coming year. 

Back into the Great Hall and the source of the sawing and drilling sounds is the museum’s director, Richard Gough. An expert from a previous life in installing art exhibitions, Richard is in his element building a brand-new visitor interactive for the museum. 

The interactive promises to be the museum’s most significant yet, although exactly what Richard is constructing is being kept under wraps. It includes a console desk, electronic speakers and a large wooden frame. Once completed in time for reopening, it will significantly enhance the visitor engagement opportunities, which include a dress-up station, teddy bear hunt and weapons handling sessions.  

For Richard, ‘even after all this hard work, the team are really looking forward to welcoming visitors back for what should be a ground-breaking 2025 season’.