Newsletter: June 2024
Welcome to a bumper edition of our monthly Newsletter, covering two months of hard work. May was such a busy month for our the team we didn’t have time to write about, it so you will find May and June news rolled into one.
Coins and the Sea Exhibition
On 25th May we were delighted to open our Coins and the Sea exhibition at the Royal Mint Experience.
Visitors to the site in Llantrisant, South Wales, can now set sail on a voyage that will transport them from the cabinets of the Museum to 20,000 leagues under the sea. They will be able to dive into the history of coins and their place on the high seas, find out why people went to sea and what everyday life on ships was like. Why do we have such strong links to the sea on our coins and did pirates really bury their treasure?
The exhibition features objects recovered from wrecks, such as Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose and the Earl of Abergavenny, an East India Company ship lost off the Dorset coast, along with numismatic treasures like the five-guinea piece made from gold captured in Vigo Bay, Spain.
Click here to book your tickets for the Royal Mint Experience where you can see all this and more of our extensive collections on display.
Hannah Spruce
We were sad to say goodbye to our Exhibitions Manager (maternity cover), Hannah Spruce in June. Since being with us she has become a valued member of the team leading on a number of exhibitions, including our most recent one, Coins and the Sea at the Royal Mint Experience. After working diligently and rising to every challenge she came across, Hannah is now moving on to a new position as Exhibitions Manager at Gosport Museum and Art Gallery and we wish her all the very best.
Hay Festival
In May and June the Museum exhibited at the popular Hay Festival, in Hay-on-Wye, Wales. It was our first time participating in the event and the aim was to promote our increasingly popular short story competition. The whole Museum team helped to staff the stand for the eleven-day long festival, camping out and spreading the word about our educational outreach programmes.
The festival welcomed over 167,000 visitors this year, which meant that tens of thousands of people were able to learn about our education programmes and our annual short story competition. Guests and visitors included children, parents, teachers, education professionals and even some well-known writers! It was a fantastic experience that we plan to repeat next year. Will we see you there?
Short Story Competition
We are pleased to announce this month that we have a winner for our short story competition. The topic this year was in keeping with our Museum-wide theme of Coins and the Sea. We asked young people aged 8-11 to write 500 words, starting with a prompt of a ship full of gold sailing through a storm.
We received over 1,000 entries featuring fearsome pirates, brave sea captains, quick-witted cats, magic coins and a wide variety of other entertaining characters. Well done to everyone who entered.
Our competition judge was Greg Jenner, historian and writer, who was attending the Hay Festival at the same time as us to promote his new book. Greg announced the winner live from the event on Sunday 26th May.
Congratulations to Ione Knight for her story ‘THE GIRL WITH THE HAIR LIKE FIRE' about a young girl from the 17th century who joins her father on his ship ‘The Serendipity’.
Runners up include:
Carys Rodgers’ ‘THE MYSTERY OF THE JACOBITES LAST STAND' in which two children find a ship's cook washed ashore.
Joseph Knights’ ‘TREASURE ON DOLLAR COVE' in which James finds a shiny silver coin on the Cornish seashore.
Harriet Kinch’s ‘THE MYSTERY OF THE LADY LOUISE' in which Chloe and Jack discover a shipwreck.
Isla Antao-Davis’ ‘EXPLORING DESTINY' in which a diver, Alice, finds a link to her family on an old shipwreck.
Theo Whittingham’s ‘THE SMITHS OF SHIPWRECK ISLAND' in which the hermit crabs of Shipwreck Island dazzle for miles around.
Highly commended entries include:
Riya Sekeram’s ‘SOPHIE AND THE MAGIC COIN' in which an old bronze coin sends Sophie on an adventure.
Filip Cichuta’s ‘THE FIERY ALBATROSS' in which the ship the Fiery Albatross sails her gold cargo through a stormy sea.
Sophie Harris’ ‘COIN CAT' in which a cat named Tiger saves the lives of the crew of the Poseidon.
Oliver McClure’s ‘HMS ROYAL MINT’ in which a ship named the HMS Royal Mint sails into a dangerous storm.
Ione will receive a 2024 annual coin set and a framed copy of her winning entry illustrated by the illustrator and coin designer, David Lawrence. Ione’s school will also receive an award of £5,000 worth of vouchers for equipment and books to invest in their library. Our four ‘highly commended’ entries and five ‘runners-up’ will each receive a commemorative coin.
Check out our website and social media channels from 11th July to read their stories and see the finished illustration of our winning story. If you are interested in finding out more about our competition visit the learning section of our website.
Coins and the Sea Podcast
At the end of June the last recordings took place for our Coins and the Sea podcast. The series of six 50-minute long episodes will be available on all major streaming platforms as well as our website by the end of July.
Through the series our team discuss the development of maritime imagery on coins, Britannia, the effects of maritime trade on coinage, what life was like on board a sailing ship, what we can learn from shipwrecks and finally all things piratical.
The last six months have been a long, challenging but extremely rewarding journey for our intrepid podcast team as they bring you these stories from our collection and from other heritage organisations and experts. Now we can’t wait for you to hear it. We hope you can join us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.
