Sara Adderson reflects on a busy year at Ely Museum and what's coming 2024

As we enjoy the festive season and look forward to the New Year, it is a great time to take stock of the last 12 months.

It’s been a busy year at Ely Museum, with projects and events and lots going on. Our exhibitions this year have included ‘Burial of a Princess?’ in which we displayed the finds from two Anglo-Saxon burials found in Ely.

The graves were those of two young girls, as part of a larger group, and they included a number of beautiful high status objects such as a gold and garnet pendant and some fine glassware.

We followed that with ‘Prehistoric Jaws’, and exhibition featuring marine reptile teeth borrowed from The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences and looking at the wonderful prehistoric creatures who lived in this area during the time of the dinosaurs.

Our events included both Medieval and Anglo-Saxon Living History days, where people could meet and chat to re-enactors about life in the past, two popular series of evening talks, holiday activities for the whole family, and our new programme of craft workshops for adults.

We ended the year with the fantastic news that the National Lottery Heritage Fund are supporting out upcoming project to sort, research and share more of our stored collection and our new programme of events for 2024 and 2025.

We’re actively looking for people who are keen to come and volunteer with us, at the moment we particularly want people who are interested in helping to delivery school visits and engage young people with history.

In the New Year we anticipate new volunteer roles to be available in delivering events and in documenting the objects in the stored collection.

It’s going to be another busy year at Ely Museum, with lots of things for visitors and families to do and see.