Touring Exhibitions at Barnet Museum

Exhibitions are displayed in Barnet Museum and are free.

The Barnet Foundling Hospital, Monken Hadley, 1762-1768
1 December 2012 – 28 February 2013

The Barnet Foundling Hospital, Monken Hadley, 1762-1768 considers one of six small hospitals set up by the Foundling Hospital, London.

The Barnet branch was in Monken Hadley from 1762 to 1768. It had views over Enfield Chase and its manager, Mrs Prudence West, lived a mile away in Barnet itself. A variety of objects directly related to some of the children who were placed in the Barnet Hospital, will be displayed during the exhibition. These include poignant identifying coin tokens left by mothers with their babies, should they ever return to claim their child and letters written by Mrs West.

The tokens will be provided by the Foundling Museum in London and the letters by Coram, the organisation which emanated from the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children, established by Royal Charter in 1739. The exhibition has been curated by Yvonne Tomlinson and provides a glimpse into important research undertaken over the last few years.

The Barnet Foundling Hospital, Monken Hadley, 1762-1768  will continue at Barnet Museum until Thursday 28 February 2013, but the original objects will be replaced by images on Monday 14 January 2013. It will then be displayed in three of Barnet’s libraries – in Hendon from 5 to 17 March; East Barnet from 19 to 30 March and Chipping Barnet from 2 to 14 April.

Foundling Voices
1 December 2012 – 13 January 2013

The second exhibition, Foundling Voices is one of the outcomes of the Foundling Museum’s recent oral history project. The Museum has been collecting oral histories donated by people who were the last to be cared for by the Foundling Hospital in Berkhamsted, which ceased operations in 1954. It is the last of a series of touring exhibitions, following a major exhibition held in the Foundling Museum in London in 2011.

In 1954 fostering became ‘the norm’ and the ‘Hospital’ or residential school building became a local authority school. The exhibition will include extracts from some individual histories – as audio clips, transcriptions and on film. Such extracts explores memories of separation, school, love, loss and rediscovery from foundlings who grew up in the twentieth-century Foundling Hospital. This exhibition has been curated by the Foundling Museum and is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. It will close on Sunday 13 January 2013. Despite being separated by two centuries, the exhibitions reveal how similar the children’s lives and experiences were. The truth and honesty of recent experience may allow insight, at least in part, to the stories of the foundling children of the distant past.

Find out more about Foundling Voices here.

Barnet Museum & Local History Society, 31 Wood Street, Barnet EN5 4BE.
T: +44(0)20 8440 8066
E: enquiries@barnetmuseum.co.uk
www.barnetmuseum.co.uk
Open: Tuesday to Thursday, 14:30 - 16:30. Saturday 10:30 - 16:00. Sunday 14:00 - 16:00
(Closed 24 December – 1 January)