RIPON MUSEUM TRUST
Annual General Meeting 2013
Held at the Golden Lion, Allhallowgate, Ripon on March 14th
Present: All of the Board’s Trustees/Directors - Richard Taylor (Chair), Christine Orsler,
David Thelwall, Anthony Chadwick, Jill Wilkinson, Mandy Whitehead, John Witherick, Paul
Bisson and Grenville Hargreaves plus Sue Dalton and a further forty-one Trust members
and attenders.
1. Welcome The chairman welcomed everyone, in particular Alan Weston the new City
Development Manager and our speaker Alexa Morton from the National Trust.
Apologies for absence : Connie Birkenshaw, Shirley Bradley, Alison Brayshaw, Alan and
Jill Clayton, Brian and Frances Carroll, Lois Toyne and Ros Watson.
2. Minutes of the AGM of 15th March 2012 were approved, and signed by the
chairman.
3. Chairman’s report.
Richard Taylor was pleased to report that we are in receipt of a donation from the Mayor’s
Charity. Mick Stanley, who was Mayor at the time, handed a cheque for £1,000 to the
Treasurer.
The Chairman’s report, liberally illustrated with slides, was divided into three sections.
The first was called Making it Happen and charted the busy year of activities and events,
some regular ones like Live It (Living History) and the Heritage Arts Festival and some
special like the garden party at the Workhouse to celebrate the wedding of our former
manager Penny Hartley. It has been a good year for group visits, particularly education
ones. Improvements have been carried out at all of our three sites, most notably the
incorporation of the west wing of the gatehouse into the the Workhouse Museum following
the departure of Ripon Local Studies. The staff are now in better offices and the enlarged
shop with new product ranges should aid the viability of the museums. More support for
volunteers has been a theme this year and a new newsletter was written and produced by
our volunteers.
The second was Strengthening Links. Sue Dalton's arrival has helped to build our
relationships with the outside world, from the city to far beyond. Sue now represents us on
GRIP and on Welcome to Harrogate. Other examples are our working with radio and TV
notably on a programme for ITV featuring the writer Barbara Taylor Bradford who visited
the workhouse to see where her grandmother and briefly her mother lived. It has been a
good year for awards: we won the Yorkshire region prize in the Marsh Awards for
volunteers in education and were shortlisted for the White Rose Tourism Awards
sponsored by Welcome to Yorkshire.
The final section was called Challenges Ahead and picked up on some of the opportunities
and also threats which are coming up this year. There was an urgent need to improve
signing to all three museums and we looked forward to close working with the new City
Development Manager to achieve this. Work on the collections will feed into our
application for Accreditation in November. Growing our visitor numbers continues to be
desirable not least because we know that those who come seem to enjoy it. We are trying
to extend the visitor season into the shoulder months and are planning ahead for bigger
challenges in 2014 such as the commemoration of the start of WW1 and the arrival of the
Grand Depart of the Tour de France. But our biggest challenge is whether to take on the
workhouse site and if so what to do with it. Much planning lies ahead.
Finally, RT thanked all who had made this possible and wished everyone a successful and
enjoyable 2013.
4.Treasurer’s Report
David Thelwall reported that 2012 has seen a landmark in the history of the Trust. It is the
first year our Trading (i.e. excluding capital works) has hit £100,000 mark. Although our
Operating Surplus was up, overall we recorded a loss of some £16,000. This was partly
due to the timing of HLF claims and also of course the Grant Rate is 90% and we had to
find the other 10% which comes from our normal Trading.
Visitor numbers were up by some 4 % overall with schools up 7%, groups up 56% and
general visitors up by 2%. Furthermore, spend per head was up by 9%. It is quite hard to
put this in context. Spring and early summer were up spectacularly by around 20% but the
weather and the Olympics dragged our late summer and autumn visitor numbers down
significantly.We know that local outdoor attractions like Newby and Fountains were down
but small towns, like Ripon, in the north-east were actually up by about 2%. So it looks like
we have certainly held our own!
Over the next two years, our aim is to increase our operating surplus significantly -- and if
the longer opening times, higher Gift Aid levels, EPOS tills and exciting new events all play
their part, we could touch an overall £20,000 surplus -- let's see. The extended opening
hours alone are already equivalent to 7% of last years total admissions income.
We are clearly going to need to step up yet another gear if the exciting potential of Sharow
View is to be realised. This is why we are undertaking a comprehensive Strategic Review
to look at all the options and maximise our performance, our long-term sustainability and
our professionalism. We all have a huge part to play in this and it's great to see the
marvellous participation from everyone involved. Thank you all.
5. Curator’s Report
5.1 Workhouse Advisor
Anthony Chadwick reported that the Board have agreed that Peter Higginbottom should be
invited to be Honorary Historic Advisor to the Workhouse.
5.2 Displays
There is now a move towards illustrating/interpreting collections through people historically
connected to them. Everyone will know the dummy Constable Sweeting and his truncheon
in the P.and P. We can match that now with the police rattle of Sweeting’s contemporary
Constable Samuel Winn, the Liberty’s first uniformed policeman, appointed when the
courthouse opened in 1830.
The Workhouse has previously offered little in the line of historic personalities, but 2012
brought us a real surprise. We knew the last parish workhouse Master, John Adams had
been sacked after rioting in Ripon in 1852. But it took a family historian, Rosalyn
Greenwood, to provide Adam’s domestic history, and the story has proved to be a real
cracker. Adam’s story is one of serial adultery, masterly confidence trickery, fooling both
the Borough establishment and the Cathedral. Although illiterate, he became workhouse
master, yet 10 years later fell in spectacular circumstances, being taken to the courthouse
to face a magistrate. He was sent to the House of Correction, and on release organised a
town riot, breaking the workhouse windows, which ended with his dismissal; but with
something of a reprieve to allow him to continue as the workhouse porter. Then to sink into
such drunkenness that he ended his life an inebriate pauper in his own workhouse. This
story, for which we already have illustrations made by Lindy Dark will play a leading part of
developments in the tramp cell corridor.
5.3 Buildings
John Witherick is to be congratulated on the remarkable improvements to the courthouse.
It is now lit to illuminate the Georgian architecture and it can be used for evening events in
the winter. We owe a lot of thanks to Eric Monk for his minding the P. and P, to Denis
Boniface for his constant attention to the environmental monitoring and to Fred Lee for the
huge amount of maintenance work he carries out.
5.4 Collections and cataloguing
We are also to congratulate Joyce Walmsley and her team for coming to the end of the
police uniform cataloguing. There is so much less congestion that the corridors in the
Town Hall store can at last be walked through, and there is access to the remaining
unopened boxes.
We now have the collected historical books, papers, plans and maps of the Ripon Local
Studies group, now amalgamated into the Trust as the Archive Group, and welcome Derek
Edmondson who is taking charge of this, and the new archive room upstairs in the
gatehouse. A team is in touch with Keith Sweetmore at the County Archive Office to
consider the indexing of the Ripon Workhouse records.
6. Appointment of Independent Financial Examiners.
It was proposed by David Bowes and seconded by Linda Blades that EuraAudit remain as
auditors. This proposal was carried unanimously.
7. Proposal from the Board for an Ordinary Resolution that ‘The Board shall have a
maximum of nine Directors’ was put forward by David Thelwall and seconded by Tim
Robinson. The proposal was carried unanimously.
8. Election of Board.
As required by the constitution, three Trustees/Directors are required to stand down each
year. The Board determined that these would be Christine Orsler, Richard Taylor and Jill
Wilkinson. All three offered themselves for re-election and, in the absence of any other
nominations, it was suggested that they be elected en-bloc. The proposer for this was
Ralph Lindley, seconded by Linda Blades and the motion was carried unanimously. This
leaves the Board composition as in 2012.
9. Chairman’s Forum
Alan Weston was invited to introduce himself to those assembled. He expressed his
approval of the obvious dedication and active involvement of the RMT staff and
volunteers, and suggested that, in today’s difficult economic climate, the places that will
thrive will be those which pay most attention to their attributes - heritage/culture/commerce
etc. He is clear that the way forward for Ripon is for the whole City to work together and in
the next few weeks a debate will begin on what should be done through the City Plan.
Everyone’s views will be welcomed and residents will shortly be informed of the
opportunities to participate in this exercise.
No questions were put to the chairman from the floor and the meeting closed at 8.20p.m.
........................
Guest speaker
After a short interval there was a lively and inspiring talk by Alexa Morton, the National
Trust’s Visitor Experience and Marketing Manager at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal
Estate.
Some of her key points included:
• Focussing advertising on Harrogate and the Dales - this is the only area locally where
staying visitors are increasing.
• The importance of knowing your audience - segmenting. Their top three segments
are Explorer Families (who like to learn and do things together), Out and Abouts
(more spontaneous - just want a day out) and Curious Minds (core audience, often
older, who want to learn). Get as many visitor responses as possible - surveys,
comment cards, trip advisor, twitter, facebook etc.
• Move away from bureaucracy and be creative, tell inspiring stories, keep things fresh
and changing and don’t be ‘eventaholics’. Ask ‘what do we do already that could be
made into an event’. The longer visitors can be persuaded to stay, the better time
they have and the more money they spend.
• Defining ‘Spirit of Place’ in a way relevant to visitors - the unique, distinctive and
cherished aspects. This can sometimes conflict with desire to make money e.g.
advertising banners, Santa’s grotto.
She also suggested that we (NT and RMT) could perhaps combine our efforts for the St.
Wilfrid’s Parade.