Who’s who in the Roman Baths Bloggers?

You would be forgiven in believing that the RBM collections team was huge group of people, because of the number of different names that appear as bloggers.

This is not the case! Of paid staff, there are only 2 of us. But although our office is small, we welcome 10-13 enthusiastic volunteers each week and around 7 placements from different levels of education each year.

The age range is from 17-retired. Some are here to improve their CV (and those that do, have gone onto great jobs in museums, teaching and even archaeological units), others do it just for fun.



Our summer trip 2012 : once a year we have a study trip to a site or museum where we try not to enjoy ourselves too much

And as Roman Baths and Bath are well known abroad, we get a great mix of different nationalities: so far only the continents Africa, South America and Antarctic (and as our office tends to be quite hot, inhabitants of the last continent would not be accepted) have not been represented. Students studying archaeology, museum studies or heritage management come to us and, despite the perilous jobs market nearly all have a job in their chosen sector.

Nicola, who came all the way from Sydney to do her placement with us

Volunteers work on many different tasks: cataloguing archaeological material, or historical photographs, helping with new displays, research and events, for Science Week, and summer Tuesday Times Tables, our team prepare handling tables to share their favourite objects and subjects with visitors.



Penny: her nose in a book improving her already extenisve knowledge of Bath history




Tony on  placement with us from UWE

 All these keen, lovely people are encouraged/persuaded/even bribed with cake to write a blog and get their name “out there” and ensure a little part of them lives on in Bath, even when they’ve gone to paid employment or back home.

Yes, we do have enough chairs...but sometimes the floor is better...

If you are interested in joining us, we are usually booked up with volunteers and placements 6 months ahead so get in touch as early as possible! As you will have seen from previous blogs are collections and the work we do with them are varied, so if you have a particular skill or enthusiasm for a type of object: you never know it might just be the one we need help with!


Susan, Collections Manager