Museum enters a new era

By happenstance, two excitable swords and sandals epics are coming out of Hollywood telling the story of the Roman Ninth Legion just as those mysterious soldiers get the showbiz treatment in the city where they lived.

York, or rather the fortress of Eboracum, was the headquarters of this crack fighting unit. One day in AD117, it was despatched to sort out a spot of bother north of the border.

The troops were waved out of sight into the Forest of Galtres and wished a speedy return. But they never came back. The entire legion vanished into history in the glens of Caledonia and not a single soldier of the Ninth was ever heard from again.

That at least is the story which was picked up and embroidered by Rosemary Sutcliffe in a novel she wrote in 1954 called The Eagle of the Ninth. It follows the fortunes of a disillusioned young Roman soldier who travels to Scotland seeking to restore the honour of his father who served in the Ninth.

Hollywood has adapted the book for a film of the same name to be released in September. Directed by Kevin Macdonald, the legionaries resemble American GIs to make a point about second century imperialism and what is happening today in Iraq or Afghanistan.

A second film called Centurion, just released, concentrates on the blood and mayhem of the story, as the Ninth Legion is set upon miles from home by Caledonian tribes and is massacred in gory detail.

But to return to the facts at York. The evidence is a commemorative tablet recording the re-building in stone of the south east gate to the Roman fortress. It reads that the gateway was built by the Ninth Legion under the instructions of Emperor Trajan. It is dated to the 12th year of his reign, AD 107-108. The tablet was dug out of York city centre by drain layers in 1854 and is the finest example of Romano British inscription in existence.

One lunchtime recently it lay on the floor of the Yorkshire Museum. The inscription could not be read because it was upside down with a drill box and bits of tools lying on top. Tradesmen were working to a tight deadline – with two months to go before Yorkshire Day, August 1. By this date the tablet will have been raised into pride of place for the museum's re-opening after a nine-month closure and 2m refit.

The main door will open onto a new atrium gallery (the building's original lecture hall) titled Roman York: Meet the People of the Empire. It will have special CGI and other crowd-drawing cinematic effects. At the press of a button, a Roman will step out to speak to a visitor.

These are computer reconstructions of men and women whose skeletons were found in York graves. It was remarkably cosmopolitan around here in those days. There's an exotic African woman, an East European man, a man from the Baltic and a Berber from North Africa. This international cast is completed by Brock, a Yorkshire farmer. People who resembled these ancient citizens were recruited to play the four main characters, plus nine extras, all wearing costumes from Rome, the BBC1 series.

Andrew Morrison, head curator at the Yorkshire Museum, names the tombstone of Lucius Ducchius Rufinus, the standard bearer of the Ninth who died aged 28 in York, as his favourite museum exhibit. What is his take on the fate of Britain's mysterious foreign legion (the Ninth were originally formed in Spain).

"Whether they disappeared in a mass defeat against the tribes of Scotland, or came to a much less interesting end, what we do know is that the legend has caught the public's imagination. The new films will increase this further, and hopefully inspire people to come and learn about the truth behind the myth, starting in York where they are last mentioned.

"Some research suggests they were moved to mainland Europe. Other theories suggest they were simply disbanded. But it is known that the Romans would not be keen to publicise a mass defeat – so maybe there is some truth in the legend. Nobody really knows."

The tale of the mysterious passage of the Ninth incidentally also shows how far we have travelled in the presentation of the past. The objects we recover from it are now only part of the picture.

That was not so when I first visited the Yorkshire Museum in the autumn of 1965. It was a spartan interior of dusty urns where exhibits were laid out in rows of glass-topped cases. Information was provided by terse captions on curling pieces of card. By that date the museum had been in the council's hands for four years. But in its austere look and ethos it was still the product of its creators, the Yorkshire Philosophical Society.

The YPS, formed 1822, was exclusively for wealthy private individuals. The aristocracy had the time and money to drive scientific inquiry and in York they gathered one of the largest and most important collections of natural history and geological specimens outside London. Lower orders with intelligence were barred by the fact that it cost 5 to be a member of the society, plus 1 a year at a time when a skilled tradesman was earning 18 shillings a week.

Land beside the ruins of St Mary's Abbey, three acres, later extended by a further five and half acres, were purchased by the YPS for a museum and botanic gardens. Cowsheds and pigsties were cleared as architect William Wilkins, later the designer of the National Gallery in London, expanded on plans by a local man, Richard Sharp. The final bill came to 6,868 and the Yorkshire Museum opened early in 1830.

A lecture hall was added at the back in 1912 and named after a YPS president and benefactor, Tempest Anderson. There may be some who wish for a return to Anderson's time when this was a serious place for serious people. Andrew Morrison is not one of them. Things move on and museums have to try different approaches beyond exclusivity and high-mindedness. Inclusiveness seems to be his watchword. Last year, they had 44,000 visitors from April to November, a third more than the previous year. But in 1958 they had 100,000. Half a century ago, there may have been less to do and see in York. Today there's a lot of competition for the historically-inclined tourist's pound, especially with a behemoth just across the river, the National Railway Museum, where entry is free. Andrew Morrison wants to make sure the Yorkshire Museum gets it's share of the cake and uses the lessons he learned working for English Heritage at Rievaulx, Brodsworth Hall, Fountains Abbey and Byland. He arrived in York as a documentation assistant five years ago.

Giving the museum a new shape has been a team effort he says, the result of a pooling of ideas. The Tempest Anderson Hall was built on top of the 12th century chapter house of St Mary's Abbey and this space is being opened up as the medieval gallery. In the process they have uncovered the old sub-curator's home, complete with cast iron fireplace, which no-one knew was there.

This gallery, called Medieval Power and the Glory will hold the treasury – the Middleham Jewel, the Vale of York Viking hoard (the biggest found in 150 years), the Gilling sword and the Cawood sword. The famous York helmet, found by a digger driver clearing away the demolition rubble of the ABC cinema in Piccadilly in 1982, will have a central spot in an archway.

New windows using part of their medieval stone glass collection will

open out on to St Mary's Abbey and help give an impression that this was also an era of colour, not just gloom and bare stone.

The Roman and the medieval will be two of five divisions of the museum – the others are Natural history, an audio visual history of York and a learning level. Andrew Morrison describes this as something for everyone "where if you want to do bonkers things with kids you can go to." In the bigger picture, he's one for unifying, not

compartmentalising. He wants to stress for example how the classical world lives on, underpinning science and influencing everything from the Olympics to poetry. And all contained in a lighter, brighter space.

For the first time, they will be opening the YPS library on the top floor – 42,000 volumes, the oldest a 1530 work by Agricola on metalwork. The public can view the stacks from a respectful distance or book an appointment to work here.

The Middleham Jewel and the other treasures come back to York from the British Museum at the end of next month and Andrew Morrison is keen to make sharing experience and collections with the BM permanent.

This re-creating of the Yorkshire Museum sounds expensive, but compared with the Rotunda in Scarborough (19m) and the Ashmolean in Oxford (37m) their 2m is a shoestring budget.

One part of the project where they could not cut corners was an area which did not tax the minds of those original leisured members of the YPS – the loos. The new ones occupy an extended area beside the spot where perished medieval monks once sat to warm themselves against their sole source of heat, the monastery kitchen fire.

"The design of the loos was key. When people come to place like this today they want a refreshing experience," says Andrew Morrison. "I've now learnt so much about that sort of thing."

YP MAG 29/5/10