Mike Barford, a well known member of Richmond Hockey Club and long term organiser of the annual Varsity Match, has joined the volunteer team at the Museum.

For the last six years, Mike Barford has been working in the Christ’s Hospital School (CH) Museum, leading a team of volunteers who have been sorting, storing, cataloguing and promoting its extensive collections. These collections include 169 oil paintings which are on display throughout the school’s buildings and which feature on the BBC Your Paintings website. CH also has a complete archive record of pupils who have entered CH since 1563 which is deposited at London Metropolitan Archives and which is an invaluable source of information for family history researchers.

An impressive permanent exhibition was set up in the CH Museum in 1994, displaying all manner of artefacts which tell the story of this remarkable school, which was founded in the City of London in 1552, and which moved to Horsham in 1902. A permanent staff of two had developed the museum throughout the 90s, but financial cutbacks led to the museum being effectively mothballed in 2003.

When, in 2006, Mike visited the school where he had taught from 1971 to 1974 in order to research a book which he was writing about CH engravings, he found a huge backlog of unsorted and uncatalogued material which had continued to be donated. Most of the existing catalogues could no longer be related to the items which they listed and were therefore of little practical value. There were also no computer facilities in the Museum.

Embarking on a limited project to sort and catalogue the collections of books and engravings, other volunteers came forward to help and within 18 months he found himself leading a team of six dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers, working their way through all the collections with the help of six networked computers which were installed.

Six years on, the volunteer team has sorted and catalogued nearly all the collections using basic collection managements systems which they set up, financed and published seven books which feature items from the collections, mounted a major exhibition at Horsham Museum, initiated an extensive programme of digitisation of unique archive material and created a website within CH’s own website.

Eighteen months ago, they were joined by an experienced, qualified museum curator who has added her expertise to the enthusiasm of the volunteers and is reviewing the collections management systems with a view to these becoming compliant with the demands of museum accreditation.

They work closely with the school in promoting CH’s unique heritage as the most charitable school in the UK. They also deal with family history enquiries from all over the world.

More information about CH can be found on its website and in particular on the Museum and Heritage page.

Mike hopes that the experience which he has gained at CH, together with the knowledge gleaned from a lifetime of collecting books and engravings about hockey, will be helpful to the team working at The Hockey Museum.

Katie Dodd, May 2013