Heritage room opens with music exhibition

The new space, which received £50,000 in funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), will be launched with its first exhibition, Edison to Evile – a Century of Enjoying Music.

It explores how people around Huddersfield have been enjoying music for the past 100 years, whether by dancing, attending live performances or listening at home.

Cylinder record players, concert tickets and dancing costumes will help visitors to recall some of the favourite music memories in their life.

The exhibition features rare CDs and posters of Evile, a heavy metal band from Huddersfield, costume from Huddersfield carnival and memorabilia from Huddersfield Choral Society.

Visitors will be able to hear 78 records bought locally in the 1930s and even listen to the earliest known recording of a human voice, made in 1860, as well as sampling the Messiah and Evile.

Curator Katina Bill said: “The early recordings are quite scratchy with a lot of surface noise, and really give a sense of hearing a voice from a long time ago.

“They are quite eerie as if there actually is a ghost in the machine – so different from today’s perfect digital recordings.”

Tolson Museum is at Ravensknowle Park, Wakefield Road, Huddersfield HD5 8DJ.

The exhibition, Edison to Evile, runs until September 11.

The new space, the first new gallery at the museum for 17 years, will reflect the communities and individuals who make up South Kirklees and local schools, community groups and visitors to the museum have been involved in its development.

Volunteers have also been working hard to collate information about Kirklees Museums and Galleries’ collection of objects, many of which are on display to the public at Tolson Museum.