At last it’s here! The Second Edition. Click here to view

Winsham Web Museum, launched in July 2002, was the first UK small community museum to exist solely in cyber space. Structured in ways similar to conventional museums, it has galleries, show rooms and displays, but it also has a unique advantage. It is open three hundred and sixty five days a year, twenty-four hours a day, and you can spend hours browsing through exhibits without getting sore feet!  The Winsham Web Museum is designed to let you just ’pop-in’ for a few minutes. Just browse a particular gallery. Save the other Galleries for another time. There are currently fourteen to choose from, containing nearly eight hundred web pages and some 2,000 pictures, Follow the links that interest you.

Why a second edition was needed

The main reason is the advent of Broadband. When the site was originally designed Winsham did not have an Internet Broadband service, so it had to be designed around the old dial –up service speed of 56kbs. Pictures had to be small if they were to load quickly; web pages also had to be limited in content for the same reason. Broadband has given web site designers much greater scope, to provide larger brighter and more easily viewed pages. Nowhere is this seen better than in the new Winsham at Play Gallery

New ways of moving around the Web Museum

Navigation could not be easier. The Home Page is a picture menu. Simply select the topic that interests you, place your mouse marker over the picture and left click. You may, depending on the topic, go straight to the page or to another picture menu that gives you further choices relating to your interest. Just select and left click as before. You can return easily to previously viewed pages by using links, browser tabs or your browser ’back’ button.

Fourteen Galleries to interest you

Whatever your interests you are sure to find items that will interest and inform you.

Winsham History- explore the history of Winsham back to Saxon times-just the thing to help with school projects! Or find out more about historic Forde Abbey, Leigh House or Cricket St.Thomas - or Charlton Cottage in Church Street or the Jubilee Hall.

Winsham at Worship – Learn about the origins of St.Stephen’s and the Chapel. Study some of the detail of the construction of St.Stephen’s. The significance of the Rood Screen. The history of the Bells. Lots of other interesting information too about both the Church and Chapel.

Winsham School. A wide collection of material including School logs dating from1863 and old pictures. Also some information about primary school education in the nineteenth century.

Winsham at War. A wealth of pictures and information about many aspects of Winsham in the two world wars and the Boer War and the people who served in them. Includes an account by Fred Newton of his period as a Japanese Prisoner of War and his experience of the Atom Bomb being dropped on Nagasaki. Learn about the Winsham Home Guard and lots more.

Farming in Winsham. A fascinating account of a small farmer’s life during the ‘roller coaster’ ride that was a farmer’s lot in the twentieth century. Lots of pictures and maps.

The Parish Council. This gallery records the history of the parish as set by the decisions and actions of the Parish Council since its first meeting at the end of 1894.Details of past Officers, precepts. Past Minutes. Background to local government .Have some fun with the Timelines.

The Millennium Book. The Web version of the Millennium Book created to mark the Millennium year by recording a ‘snapshot’ of life in the parish in 2000.

Winsham at Play. It is well known that Winsham knows how to enjoy itself. This mega gallery contains seventy two pages and nearly four hundred photographs, and it grows all the time. Fabulous pictures of Drama productions and Street Fairs and much more. Maybe you will see yourself!

Fossils, Flora & Fauna. Comprehensive and entertaining descriptions of what can be found within the parish. Includes the ‘Bugs ‘n’ Bees items from the Parish Web site contributed by the late Paul Smith

Researching your Family. A guide to the resources available within the Parish, dating back to 1559.

Memories of Winsham. A real trip down memory lane for the older visitors, and a fascinating view for younger visitors of what life used to be like before the ‘wireless’(not to be confused with ‘wi-fi’), television and the Internet. Includes the new ‘Can you help us’ section where we seek your help in identifying people and events from old photographs.

The Winsham Archive. A pictorial record of the documentation that we lived with before the age of the Computer.

Joint Parish Magazine. This contains .pdf files of past Joint Parish Magazine. It is hoped eventually to have a record of all the magazines since its inception some twenty five years ago. Meanwhile here are just a few.

About the Web Museum. This contains a lot of material about the early days leading up to the launch of the Winsham Web Museum, in 2002.If you are an IT ‘buff’ you will find all sorts of technical bits which you may find of interest.

There are also links to Museums around Somerset, the Parish Web site and the history of the Winsham E-letter.

Coming Soon-The Winsham Shop-sometime in the early Autumn there will be a Gallery devoted to the History of the Winsham Village Shop and Post Office, with particular emphasis on the period when shop ownership transferred from private ownership to ‘village ownership’.

The Winsham Web Museum belongs to you
The Winsham Web Museum belongs to the people of Winsham. By transferring the hundreds of thousands of words and the thousands of pictures into digital format, the probability of this information about our way of life and the people who have gone before us has been greatly increased. If you have pictures that record your family and their way of life and you would like to share them with others, please let us know. We are also looking for volunteers to ensure the continuity of the Web Museum and to transfer data into the web museum system. Some PC experience is necessary, but not a lot. If you need any training we will be happy to provide it. See the Home Page for Contact details.

 



 

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