A Visit to Weobley Museum by Sue Hubbard

With its fine church (second highest spire in the county) and black and white houses and its many historical connections Weobley is a popular destination for visitors but many people don’t realise that it also has its own museum. The museum is very small – only two rooms – but it is well worth a visit if you have time to spare.
The first thing you come to as you enter is a display of items found by a local metal detectorist in the fields around Weobley. There are fancy shoe buckles, clay pipes, loom weights, thimbles (some of them small enough to fit a child’s finger), a lead toy horse, a Roman enamel brooch, coins and hop tokens of various dates and buttons off the livery uniforms worn in earlier centuries by servants in wealthy households. These are cleverly woven into a story of life in the village and are a vivid reminder of the history lying just below our feet.
Next is a display showing how the treatment of illness has developed down the years. It begins with some of the remedies concocted by seventeenth century housewives, such as an infallible cure for jaundice made from turmeric, angelica, green goose dung and sheep’s tricklings infused in strong old beer, a glass full to be drunk twice a day before meals. Medical treatments improved in 1837 after a new workhouse was built in the village as the two doctors appointed there set up a medical club for labourers offering free treatment in return for a small annual subscription (extra charge for midwifery). This display ends with a collection of patent remedies from a 1930s medicine cabinet at Henwood, Dilwyn – judging by the number and variety of items on show it must have been a pretty sizeable cabinet.
Among other items you will find in this room are a long case clock made by local clockmaker Uvedale Davies, some interesting old maps and a selection of old tools including the ‘Little Wonder’, a two man mechanical hedge trimmer as demonstrated on Gardeners World.