A personal collection stored safely in a One Mile shed has more than a few stories to tell.
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That’s partly why retiree Dennis Taylor has made a difficult decision to gift the items back to his home town of Maitland.
Mr Taylor was raised on a dairy farm at Four Mile Creek, which used to stretch to Green Hills, where he began his collection at age 10.
If he didn’t collect the light agricultural and domestic artifacts at home, odds are he collected them from other farms around Maitland.
But Maitland Regional Museum, which is operating out of Brough House in central Maitland, does not have enough room to house the collection. David Atkinson, the museum collections committee member, spent last Friday cataloguing the wide range of items even if he’s a little short on space to display the items, for now.
Mr Atkinson said it needed at least a 4m x 6m space and it had to be moved from Mr Taylor’s home in One Mile this week.
“I’ve not seen this kind of collection before, a lot of museums have this kind of stuff in them – that come from their own area – this chap’s collection is quite extensive and it’s so eclectic,” he said.
“It would be a shame if Maitland missed out on it.
“The collection is an eclectic mix of light agricultural and domestic artefacts collected over a lifetime – it ranges from a big old brass water pump that would have been used on a well to a collection of rabbit traps, the only one in the world in fact that covers the whole of a line of traps made by one manufacturer.
“There are rat traps that don’t look like rat traps, tins that are 50 years old … bottles, a rope making machine.
“Some of the items are from iconic properties in the area.”
Mr Atkinson said there were also a range of old clothes irons.
“The ones where you put a billet into the fire to get it real hot, slip it into the iron, clap the back shut and that heats the iron,” he said.
“You would have half a dozen of them on the stove and as they would get cold you would use another one.”
Museum president Dr Janece McDonald said Mr Taylor’s donation had again emphasised the need for a museum space that was large enough to store collections.
“The bottom line is that there are numerous significant collections in Maitland that will be lost if there is not a Maitland Regional Museum to preserve, conserve and exhibit such artefacts and stories,” she said.
“The lack of a specific building and storage space will greatly influence whether this collection can be acquired and kept in the Maitland community.”
Dr McDonald has been instrumental in the campaign for a suitable museum facility.