Blog

On Saturday, the Rumble Museum held its first ever Moth Night at Cheney School!

15 Year Seven and Eight students were very privileged to meet moth expert and illustrator Richard Lewington. Richard first of all set the students the task of painting some of the pine trees with a thick treacle-and-rum mixture. This mixture can attract moths to the trees. He set up a few moth traps of different types, and explained to the group how these worked.

He then showed some of the many moth illustrated guides he has made, and the students were then able to use these to identify some of the many moths which Richard had brought from catching in his garden the night before. Everyone was amazed by just how many different sorts of moths visited an ordinary Oxfordshire garden. There were a few elephant hawk moths, which are a stunning pink and green colour. There was a cinnabar moth, with a vibrant red splashed across its dark wings. There was a brimstone moth, named, just like its more well-known butterfly counterpart, after its yellow wings.

The Rumble Museum at Cheney is running a project to find out more about the history of Cheney School, by connecting with past pupils from the two schools which moved to the current site in the 1950s, Cheney Technical School and Cheney Girls School. In recent years, the Rumble Museum has installed large display boards in its canteen so that current students can learn more about the long and interesting history of Cheney School.

Lynn Ferris, a Cheney Girls Grammar School alumna, recently met with Museum Project students in Year Nine to share her experiences, and she kindly donated her old uniform and some photographs. One of the photographs is an old school photograph of Cheney Girls Grammar School, and a group of Lynn's friends are keen to identify the other pupils featured in the photograph. The Rumble Museum would like to invite any former pupils from the Cheney Girls Grammar School to get in touch, with stories, information and objects, as it is keen to digitise these, and to organise an event where former pupils can visit the school site.

On Friday 25th June, our Museum Council students visited he Oxford Natural History Museum to explore moths and butterflies as part of a Rumble Museum project to explore the moths and butterflies in our collections and on site at Cheney. We were met by museum learning officer Sarah Lloyd who took us to a classroom to show us some specimens on moths and butterflies and to introduce some important themes and characteristics.

The first thing we explored is the great diversity of the insect population, and what tends to define an insect (six legs, three segments to its body, and often two pairs of wings). We then looked at some beautiful specimens and Sarah asked the students to work out which ones were moths and which were butterflies. People tended to sort them out according to colourful and less colourful, though in fact, moths can be very colourful indeed.

This term, the Museum Council students are exploring butterflies and moths through our collection of beautiful British butterflies on display in Brighouse.

The students are taking part in a mosaics project to brighten up the outside walls of the school and to show off some of the amazing native butterflies through eye-catching mosaics. Each student has picked a favourite butterfly from the collection, and they are working every Monday afternoon with local mosaicist Clare Goodall to create mosaics of their chosen butterflies. These will then be cemented to the walls outside the school. The students have chosen well-known butterflies such as the peacock, red admiral and brimstone, as well as some other stunning butterflies such as the comma, common blue, small copper, chalkhill blue, clouded yellow and orange tip. One butterfly chosen from our collection, the black-veined white, has sadly now become extinct in Britain.

Yesterday, the Year Nine Museum Project group were privileged to be able to welcome back Lynn Ferris to the school for the first time since the 1960s. Lynn Ferris attended the Cheney Girls Grammar School in the 60s when it had recently moved to the site. It occupied the area of the school we now call C-block (named after Louisa Chadwick, a much-loved headmistress of the Oxford Central Girls School, which became 'Cheney Girls Grammar School' when it moved to the Headington Hill site in 1959).

On Thursday 27th May, we were delighted to welcome Natty Mark Samuels, founder of the African School, to run a workshop about some of our African artefacts for a group of sixth formers of African heritage.

Natty started by talking the students through some of the different countries in Africa, and some of the many languages spoken in those countries, before looking at some of the items. Natty introduced the students to items such as a beautifully decorated African doorframe, an embuutu drum, and an agaseke basket. In each case, Natty had composed a poem about the object, which gave information about how the object was used, in traditional style. The students were able to take part in some of the chants. We will be making these poems available online soon both as a booklet and audio recordings.

Natty will be working with us over the coming months to deliver more workshops, as well as poetry readings. On Friday 16th July, visitors will be able to come and explore our collection, and meet Natty and our students, who will be collecting stories and information, displaying our objects, and running workshops. You can find out more about this event here.