Text 1: The engines we rescued, by Carys Bell

An original twenty-first-century online feature.

The old pumping station at Mereford had been shut for twenty years when a group of residents began clearing it out. Now its two engines stand polished in the main room, and visitors can watch volunteers demonstrate one of them on the first Sunday of each month. The work has taken six years. Retired mechanic Alan Price says the best part is showing school groups how the machinery once brought clean water to the town.

Entry is free, though a box by the door invites contributions towards insurance and repairs. The volunteers have also collected photographs and recorded interviews with former workers. “We want people to recognise their own families in the story,” says curator Nia Evans. The museum is open for only three afternoons a week, because its small team has no paid staff. A ramp was fitted last year so visitors using wheelchairs can reach the main room.

Text 2: A collection opened to the public, by A Correspondent

An original newspaper report written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this newspaper report from 1887, a journalist describes the opening of a local museum in rooms above a market hall.

Two rooms above the market hall have been set aside for the town’s collection of maps, tools and household curiosities. Mr Vale, who has gathered most of the objects during the past thirty years, has arranged them according to the trades of the district. There are quarrymen’s hammers, weavers’ shuttles and examples of the pottery once made beside the river. He hopes that young people may learn something of the work by which their parents and grandparents earned a living.

The museum opens on Saturday afternoons, when the caretaker conducts visitors from room to room. Admission is two pence, which will be put towards keeping the building in order. Several shop workers complained that the opening hours give them no opportunity to attend. Nevertheless, the rooms were crowded on opening day, and one visitor recognised a set of tools that had belonged to his father. The mayor praised the collection as a valuable record of the town’s past, although he observed that there was little space for further gifts.