Work-based Placement – Cailin

For the past five months, I have worked as a Collections Project Assistant with the St Andrews Heritage Museum and Garden. This work placement is part of my Museum and Heritage Studies MLitt course with the University of St Andrews. I have really enjoyed getting to know more about the museum’s history and the ability to handle items from its collection.  

As part of my work-based placement, I have evaluated objects while filling out condition reports. For most objects, I also cleaned the items with a cotton swab or special dry paintbrush. The museum has a set of scale models of St Andrews Cathedral, Castle, and St Salvator’s Chapel and Bell Tower. With these, I was tasked with also making small repairs to the models with a special pH-neutral adhesive where the pieces of wood had separated.  

One box of objects I cleaned and handled, were items from the fisherfolk and the Wreck of the Merlin. As I did my undergraduate degree in Scottish History here, I have been in St Andrews for five years now, yet I knew nothing of the fisherfolk before beginning my placement. It has been enlightening to learn about the fisherfolk and the Ladyhead where they lived, especially as that is an area of town I often pass through. One of my favorite objects to handle was a wine bottle from the Wreck of the Merlin. The Merlin was a ship that was wrecked on the rocks of Castle Sands on March 5th, 1881. Afterwards, items from the ship were found on the beaches of St Andrews, which eventually were donated to the Museum. It was remarkable to me that this small wine bottle survived, with the wine still inside and only a bit of the cork broken off, knowing that the ship and its crew unfortunately did not survive.

I have also done a lot of work in my placement with the Museum’s camera collection, which includes cameras dating back over 100 years. As with the other objects, I have cleaned and done condition reports, as well as researched the specific models of each camera and the manufacturing company’s history. It has been interesting to see the evolution of different types of cameras and how they work. A few even had undeveloped film still inside, which was a really neat find. 

I know I have learned a lot about working in a museum, the Heritage Museum itself, and the history of St Andrews from this placement, and I am eager to see the museum and its redevelopments when it opens again.  

~ Cailin Culbert