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This is what has become known as the Hanson Log Boat, a Bronze Age long boat which was found at the Hanson gravel pit in Shardlow, near to Derby. It was discovered during an archaeological watching brief and they had the problem of transporting it so that it could be preserved. Given the huge weight due mostly to it being waterlogged, they came up with the idea of sawing it into smaller bits, which doesn’t feel entirely optimal but I’m not an archaeologist. They found another log boat at the site a few years later but didn’t want to move another one, so they left it for future generations to resolve the logistical arrangements.

As the signage suggests, it’s around 3,400 years old. It’s made out of one large oak tree which would have originally been over ten metres in height.

This is the boat’s final cargo, a heap of rock. More precisely, it was Bromsgrove sandstone which was likely being used to strengthen a causeway across the River Trent. Having this cargo still intact does add somewhat to the general intrigue about this boat.

This is the brass memorial plaque commemorating the life of Charles William North Garstin, 9th Lancers who died on 24 August 1914. The plaque was funded by his father, who had to deal with losing his little boy, and only son, who was aged just 20. There’s more about Charles at https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/lifestory/1313008, so I won’t repeat that, but instead I looked up his father, Sir William Garstin.

Sir William Edmund Garstin, born on 29 January 1849, was a prominent British civil engineer whose work primarily related to public infrastructure in Egypt. He was educated at Cheltenham College and King’s College in London where he specialised in engineering. He started his career in 1872 with the Public Works Department of India, focusing on irrigation projects. In 1885, his expertise led him to Egypt, where he first served as Inspector-General of Irrigation before being promoted to Under Secretary of State for Public Works in 1892. In this role, he was instrumental in overhauling Egypt’s irrigation systems, playing a key part in the design and construction of the Aswan Low Dam which was built between 1898 and 1902. His work also extended to the barrages at Asyut and Esna. Furthermore, Garstin authored significant reports on the hydrography of the Upper Nile and initiated Egypt’s geological survey in 1896.

After his retirement in 1907, Garstin continued to contribute by serving as a British Government director of the Suez Canal Company. He died on 8 January 1925, and was cremated in London. In recognition of his work, the extinct giant snake, Gigantophis garstini, was named in his honour, which I assume he would have been pleased with unless he really didn’t like snakes. I read numerous obituaries of William, but none of them mention the death of his son in the First World War, although some made reference to his Red Cross efforts. It rather means that I’m left to ponder the quiet, profound sorrow that must have underscored his later years after such a successful career.

The museum has a display in their military section about the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022 and there’s a note on the display which mentions that “the items on display have been collected by a humanitarian voluntary aid group from England which supports Ukraine.”

In the photo are:

(i) A model tank made by Ukrainian service personnel from spent small arms

(ii) Decorated spent artillery shells

(iii) A traffic sign from Sudzha, a town in Russia, which Ukrainian forces seized in 15 August 2004, although the Russians took it back on 12 March 2025.

(iv) Badges worn by Ukrainian armed forces.

A rather interesting arrangement which is up-to-date and relevant, a reminder of the illegal occupation of the great country of Ukraine that I’m looking forward to being able to return to.

This is the fragment of a Viking Hog Back tombstone which dates to around the tenth century. The information panel reads:

“When complete this was in the shape of a house, with a bear-like beast gripping each end. This type of tomb was the fashion of Norwegian settlers in Yorkshire and Cumbria, but is unusual in the Midlands.”

They’re quite intriguing things as although they were created by Vikings, they don’t appear in Scandinavia, so they’re Anglo-Scandinavian in origin. It’s made from the local Derbyshire gritstone and it seems quite tough.

It was found at St. Alkmund’s Church in Derby in 1844 when they were building a new church. There had though been a religious building on the site since the ninth century, but some bloody idiot decided to pull the church down in the 1960s. Now, this meant that numerous other historic artefacts were discovered which is fascinating from a different viewpoint, but the demolition seems a little odd to me. I’ve followed the arguments that took place in the press in the 1960s and it appears that the sheer incompetence comes down to Geoffrey Allen, the Bishop of Derby. I say this because the congregation, parochial council members and local residents seemed bloody furious and the church had to respond saying that, yes, the Church of England had agreed the demolition at meetings that Allen was present at. They struggled to provide any defence of what Allen had been doing and I’m struggling to understand why they were so willing to lose a location that had been home to a church for over 1,000 years, even conceding that the steeple was falling down. Anyway, I digress here.

I accept that this is just a brick and I really need to get out more, but this is not just a brick, it’s a Roman brick. Ignore the stuff placed on the brick, more on that later, but the Romans were the pioneers of mass production of bricks and they did it in some style. As for what the Romans did for the people of Derby, well, they built them a lovely fort in AD50 although they then decided to move their operations north and so they demolished it. However, by that point they had already built another fort at Little Chester and they didn’t demolish that one. Having noted all that, this brick is apparently from Tripontium which is about 40 miles away, but it’s a little bit of Romano-British culture. I find it intriguing to see bits of Roman brick when they appear in other buildings as the stuff seems to have lasted longer than great chunks of what they built in the 1970s. I won’t mention Anglia Square in Norwich….

I’ve never really given thought about whether hippos used to roam about Derby, but I’m not sure that I would have guessed that this was their hunting ground once. Workmen discovered these bones in Allerton in March 1895, now a suburb of Derby, when they were digging a new well at the Crown Inn. Private investors funded something of a dig and when this was completed the skeleton was given to the museum, where it remains proudly on display. 127 bones were discovered in the dig, although some of these were from another hippo and some from a passing elephant, and the hippo was thought to be around three metres in length.

The discovery proved important as it showed that there must have been a land bridge at some point between Britain and mainland Europe as it was unlikely that a hippo would have swum several miles since they can’t actually swim at all. It was later reported that when the pub had been constructed in 1878 that other bones had been discovered, but the builders threw them away not realising what they’d found. To be fair, they probably weren’t really expecting to discover the ancient remains of a river beast, perhaps more hoping to find a lost coin or two. It’s not thought that there were any humans in Britain at this time, around 120,000 years ago, so they wouldn’t have had any little territorial disputes. The hippo that was found is the same species of the hippo that live in sub-Saharan Africa today. I left the museum rather pleased that I know the answer in case anyone asks me if there used to be hippos in Derby.