Exiles entertain at Bexhill Museum

FEET were tapping and one couple were dancing between cases of stuffed birds and iguanodon fossils as Bexhill Museum broke new ground.

“This is the start of a new era for Bexhill Museum,” board chairman and head of fund-raising John Betts told the audience gathered in the Sargent Gallery last Thursday evening.

Folk and blues band The Exiles were just coming to the end of a highly-successful live gig. The event attracted more than 100 supporters and is expected to raise more than £600 for museum funds.

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The Society of Bexhill Museums is almost totally reliant on income from admissions to keep the museum running. In difficult financial times it needs to seek innovative means of boosting its income.

The chairman explained that the event was the first of a series of initiatives designed to open up the museum to a wider public.

Volunteers served drinks and nibbles in the Education Room. Supporters were able to browse collections which currently include a cat-walk display of work by fashion students and colourful enamelled metal advertising signs and boxes in a temporary exhibition of tobacco industry memorabilia.

The Exiles are a highly-experienced six-man outfit which has been delighting folk and blue fans in the area for the past four years.

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Their broad repertoire took an increasingly enthusiastic following from the American folk music of the Sixties through Chicago blues to Scottish, Irish and West Country folk, with a glance back to skiffle on the way.

For the Egerton Road building, history’s wheel had come full circle. It was originally conceived as the Shelter Hall, a covered area for fashionable Edwardian park concerts, before Bexhill Museum was established there in 1914.

For event organiser and board member Rachel Whitham and her volunteer team, the gig was a step into the unknown. To judge by the warm reception given them The Exiles will soon setting feet tapping amid the display cases again.

JOHN DOWLING