Eddie Izzard pops in as Bexhill Museum re-opens

Eddie Izzard at Bexhill Museum SUS-200723-082152001

Bexhill Museum will be open an extra day every week from July 29.

Before Covid-19 the museum opened seven days a week. It re-opened on 9 July for four days a week,Thursday to Sunday.

Now it will open every Wednesday, too. Opening hours on each day will be 11am-3pm.

Temporary changes have had to be made to conform to the government’s Covid-19 regulations and advice. These procedures have now been tested with actual visitors so the museum is ready to go to the next stage.

The museum relies almost entirely on volunteers to keep it open.

The Chair of the Trustees, Dr Anne Stacey, said: “We are indebted to our team of volunteers who have worked so hard to get the museum operating so well.

“Not all of them have been able to return yet so the burden has fallen on a reduced number of people. They have risen to the further challenge of opening an extra day.

“From our feedback so far our visitors are finding it is still very much the Bexhill Museum they recognise from previous visits

“As one family emailed after their visit last week: Just a message to say how special was visiting the museum this afternoon. It was so nice to feel things coming back to normal. The objects were absolutely fascinating. We all had a favourite object / artefact to talk about afterwards.”

There is controlled entry to the museum at busy times with visitors asked to queue along the ramp at two metre social distancing. The two metres is standard throughout the museum.

The government have asked museums to take contact details of visitors for their Track and Trace system. One name and a phone number are requested for each family group but it is not compulsory - visitors can decline to take part. A volunteer will explain the system.

Extra cleaning is done during opening hours with surfaces being wiped. There are hand gel stations at various points for visitors to use.

To enable social distancing there is a one-way system through the galleries and museum itself and no re-entry is allowed to a gallery once you have left it. However there is room to “overtake” other visitors.

Family groups are asked to keep together as they move through the galleries.

For obvious reasons the interactive exhibits for children have been removed – so there is no dressing- up area, typewriter, push-button engine displays or jigsaw.

The usual quizzes have been replaced with shorter ones which do not require a clipboard or pencil. For the adults, the Access Centre has become the no-access centre as the keyboards and documents could be deemed a potential hazard.

The Bexhill 1940 Winter Wartime Model Railway is operational but numbers allowed into the gallery to see it are limited to enable social distancing. The presentation itself has been shortened to ten minutes in order to cut waiting times in busy periods.

Once the gallery has reached capacity visitors are asked to queue for the next presentation.

The museum shop is available on exit as are take-away hot and cold drinks.