We're in the Museums Journal!

Dr Jan Knight has a piece in the News section of the Museums Journal (November edition). Do take a look. It has been wonderful to have so much vocal support from the Museums Association itself and other heritage organisations in our fight to save the Pharmacy.

With so many big guns behind us perhaps Plymouth City Council can be persuaded to reconsider their claim for costs?

Happy Memories at Thornbury Villas

Our most recent remininscence session was very succesful with an overwhelmingly positive response from the lovely people who took part. Residents of Thornbury Villas spent an afternoon revisiting scents and smells and experiences evoked by items from the Trust's collection. One lady even knew Mr Parks himself when he ran the Chemists in Mutley Plain.

Very kindly they also took the time to complete some feedback forms afterwards - this is so helpful for us. It was wonderful to find that everyone had found the session either enjoyable or very enjoyable and our team both helpful and interesting. Encouragingly the majority also reported that conversations inspired by the session continued for quite some time afterwards. Eighty percent of participants also said they would be interested in joining more sessions in the future, so that will help to keep us nice and busy!

If you know of any organistaion that would like to arrange a similar Recall Reminiscence Session then please get in touch with our Volunteer Co-ordinator Carol Manktelow on 01752 263501.

Trust us to Complain for Britain!

The Plymouth Arts Centre are hosting a new project in January - the Complaints Choir of Britain. Suggestions for complaints are needed by next week. Well we haven't heard back from Plymouth City Council on our suggestions to resolve the legal costs from the Judicial Review. Perhaps they would listen to our pleas if they were sung out loud and proud? I shall get my skates on and draft a submission to the Choir.

We saved the Lodge Garden with paperwork but can we save the Pharmacy through the medium of song? Surely worth a try (we'd better start warming up!)

Photo courtesy the Plymouth Arts Centre. For more information on the project see http://www.plymouthartscentre.org/education/Choir.html

Help! Invasion of Pseodocorus Rex

Iris pseudocorus - appropriately sounding like a particularly ferocious dinosaur - has choked our pond. After drinking it dry over the summer and weaving their roots into an impenetrable carpet of doom, the Pond Flags are now immersed in a foot of rainwater. Resistance on our part apppears to be useless. When dry, the roots are as steel cables to all secateurs, hedge trimmers, pruning knives and other forms of cutlery. Wet they are worse.

What can we do? Fear waders and scythes may be our only hope. All advice gratefully received.

Away with the Fairies...

... at the bottom of our garden. We have had our plant detective hats on today, identifying a Mysterious Woody Shrub at the very back of our medicinal garden. We'd all thought it was some sort of box hedge but a chance sighting of some small purple berries made us think again.

The internet is brilliant for this sort of thing - particularly developing the lateral thinking skills needed to keep the results search in the hundreds rather than the thousands! So after experimenting with a few keywords we've finally got it, and what do you know, it's a form of honeysuckle, Lonicera pileata. Not too much embarrassment all round though as its common name is Box-leaved Honeysuckle so we weren't the first with this mistaken identity.

Step two is to discover what, if any, are its medicinal properties. Honeysuckles are members of the family Caprifoliaceae which makes them sound like they should be from Sicily. But in fact they are to be found all over the Northern hemisphere. The Japanese honeysuckle, Lonicera Japonica, is widely used in Chinese medicine and is mentioned by John Gerard, a master herbalist of the sixteenth century, who said that honeysuckle's "floures, be steeped in oile, and set in the Sun, are good to annoint the body that is bennumed, and growne very cold." In general there is a belief that Lonicera Japonica can be applied, in the form of a poultice, to treat skin infections; drunk in the form of leaf infusion, to assist asthmatics and soothe coughs; even the seeds have diuertic effects.

Sadly there seems to be no similar indications of efficacy for our poor Box-Leaved Honeysuckle, despite its Chinese origins. Mostly it is recommended as a simple and elegant groundcover. Cue more research ... surely we can find a greater purpose for our thriving specimen?

Photograph courtsey of www.paghat.com

Magnetic Personalities

Many artefacts do not make light work so, after hefting a box or two in preparation for another reminiscence event, I wondered what we might have on the shelves to soothe our aches and pains?

Obviously it would be a little unwise to take advantage of all the patent remedies on hand. They were largely produced in an earlier era when 'best before' dates had yet to make an appearance. But even so liniment, unlike fine wines, is unlikely to improve with age.

Some themes however are still with us; magnetic therapies continue to be routinely sold as cure-alls for all manner of unpleasant symptoms. Twas ever thus. Pictured here is a fine example from our own shelves of Magnetic Liniment that "draws out pain like lightning". I rather like the idea of a massive magnet held over my exposed knee and think a bit of lotion would have a far less bracing effect. Another case of nice packaging, shame about the science!

'An Evening in Paris' to 'Blitz those Nits'

In the last two months volunteers from the Park Pharmacy Trust have visited local residential homes and a club for senior citizens to provide Recall Reminiscence Sessions. By handing round and talking about a selection from the Trust's vast collection of artefacts, conversations are started and memories sparked in everyone who takes part.Objects include beauty products, advertisement boards, old remedies, traditional household products, and all sorts of other paraphenalia.

The wonderful discussions of the participants have included memories of a weekly dosage of syrup of figs and the painful removal of head lice - stories that have indeed borne out our motto 'no matter how bitter the pill the memories of it are sweet'! Don't worry, recollections of glass babies bottles, Amami setting lotion and the smell of Old Spice aftershave inspired a few fonder memories too.

Our volunteers hope to carry out many more recall sessions in the future. A grant currently allows us to provide these sessions at no cost; interested groups or homes should contact the Trust for more information. Elaine, our project coordinator, would also love to hear from anyone interested in helping to run a session.

REMEMBER! Volunteers needed with good memories

We have an ever expanding team of volunteers helping with all aspects of the Trust's work. From cultivating our medicinal garden in Thorn Park, to manning the Merchant's House pharmacy, it's a lot of fun!

There is a real need at the moment for supervisors to run Reminiscence Recall sessions. We are very keen to recruit new volunteers interested in expanding this very popular scheme.

Park Pharmacy Trust pioneered these sessions for care homes, community centres and senior citizens clubs. The trust has received a grant from Plymouth City Council Small Grants Fund to enable it to run our workshops free of charge until March 2010. Volunteers use items from the Trust's huge collection to trigger memories and recollections. If you're a good listener and enjoy communicating with people we'd love to meet you.

Workshops are for small groups and last an hour. They can focus on a range of topics: mothers may remember well the nappy-changing, colic-comforting, cod liver oil dosing joys of babycare, men may be more familiar with the paraphenalia of wet-shaving and the shared experience of the barbershop!

If you'd like to know more then give us a call - or pop in on a Friday morning for a cup of tea and a chat about what's involved. Between 10:30 and 12:30 every Friday morning Thorn Park Lodge is open to visitors interested in knowing more about our work and volunteer opportunities.

'Pharmacy Is Phun!' for Hyde Park schoolchildren

Link to a great story in The Herald
September 17th.

NINETY children from Hyde Park Infants School have taken part in a pharmacy workshop at Thorn Park Lodge.

The six- and seven-year-olds spent the day on Wednesday learning about Victorian medicines in both the lodge and its medicinal garden, where they participated in six different hands-on activities.

These included making an old-fashioned tooth-cleaner, earning a certificate in pill-rolling and concocting their own medicines from cuttlefish bones and chalk. The children also took part in chemical experiments and learned about safety and the dangers of medicine. Pictured are Hyde Park Primary school students Luke Curtis and Finley Fleming making medicines the Victorian way.

The workshop was designed to be enjoyable, yet informative for the youngsters, with the day's motto being 'Pharmacy Is Phun!'

Our fight to save the Pharmacy

Park Pharmacy Trust, together with ward councillors, the conservation society and twenty-nine residents opposed the planning application to build four townhouses in the garden of its headquarters, Thorn Park Lodge in the Mannamead conservation area. Our charity had spent over £150,000 creating a garden of raised beds with dry stone walls containing plants used in medicine. There visitors can learn about the plants or just sit and enjoy the small scale charm of this beautiful tranquil garden. The proposed development would have destroyed the garden together with its trees, pond and habitats for wildlife.

The planners claimed that Thorn Park Lodge and garden was a residential property and not parkland in spite of representations by the trust to the contrary. However, it was subsequently discovered that the lodge and garden had been purchased in 1951 as part of the land acquired under a compulsory purchase for the establishment of Mutley Park. In addition it was learned that there are a number of restrictive covenants on the land. The garden has now been saved for the community by this discovery but at a terrible cost to the future of the Pharmacy.

We have leased the lodge, which is within Mutley Park, from the council for close to 25 years and tried to persuade the Council to abandon their plans to enter into a profit sharing arrangement with the developer, following the granting of permission for the development. As there is no appeal against the granting of planning permission Park Pharmacy Trust took the only option available: judicial review. This costly High Court option does not permit the merits of the planning application to be re-examined only to see whether there were legal irregularities in the decision-making process. Unfortunately our attempt to overturn the planning permission failed. The trust has now been saddled with a demand of over £50,000 costs from the Council. This amount includes profit to the Council who are allowed to claim £161 per hour for their own legal support staff. It is a complicated legal procedure so for more information on the judicial review process please take a look at Dr Jan Knights letter to the Plymouth Herald, published on September 3rd 2009.

The famous CJ Park Pharmacy open to the public in the The Merchant's House Museum, is the trust's only unprotected asset. It has been valued at over £55,000, however to realise its full value the Council might have to break up the collection and auction it in separate lots. This would be a tragedy – for us and for the wider community as the collection is recognised Nationally and internationally. The Park Pharmacy is a fantastically popular tourist attraction with links to local schools and community groups. It is staffed entirely by trust volunteers; the Council charge visitors £2 each to visit it and pay the trust a hire fee of £3,400 which includes all the trained volunteers together with specialist professional services per year. There are many accounts in the visitor book saying it is the best attraction in the museum.

Please help to save the Pharmacy for the people of Plymouth. Contact your ward councillors, write to the chief executive, do anything you can to either abandon their claim for costs or persuade the Council to increase the hire fee to a commercial fee. With a higher rent for care and management of the Pharmacy, the trust could repay the council in just a few years.
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Welcome to Park Pharmacy Trust's new blog

Welcome to Park Pharmacy Trust's new blog where we can share news of all the Trust's activities. Coming up soon there are a series of workshops for local primary school children, a programme of reminiscence sessions for older residents and an update on our progress in putting the Cookworthy collection back on display.