Narborough Heritage Centre has close ties with the bone mill project and has a bone mill section with a display of pictures and finds from the conservation work, and a number of people are involved with both projects. The Canberra cockpit, the museums largest exhibit, was moved on Wednesday 10 February from its position outside the heritage centre where it has been for many years, to its new location at Marham air base. It will be housed indoors and will be more accessible to visitors there. Several of us went along to watch the cockpit being moved.

On Thursday there were five volunteers. Fred had already fitted the windows and doors to the railway wagon, the big window has been filled in below with a panel and the sides have been infilled. On the entrance side a stable door with side windows has been fitted which will be ideal for a serving hatch when the wagon is on site serving refreshments to visitors and volunteers. Rubber caps have been fitted to the roof end strips with silicone sealant to protect from water leaks.

It was a frosty start so Dennis, Adam and John painted the bench seat green in the workshop but ran out of paint, so the backrest will have to wait until next time. Eddie and Graham varnished the interior wooden side panels and removed some of the screw heads and nails from the end panels.

Work then started outside, the door locking bars had been fitted by Fred and we looked at how to adjust them so the doors can close securely with the new door frame in place, a metal strip will be made for the bolt to slide into, but this was put on hold as the priority was to paint the outside while we had such good sunny weather.

We had tea brought to us by Beryl several times and again were able to sit outside for lunch. In the afternoon we all painted the outside wood and metal parts including the wagon doors. The paint is Bauxite, which is the original colour of the wagon when in service.

The new interior plywood lower end panels did not line up with the original upper ones, so extra coach bolts were added to pull them flush and Adam ground off the excess bolts on the outside. Adam was able to join us today as there was a fire at his school which means it’s closed until after half term next week. The last job was cleaning the windows and clearing up.

On 12 February we had the radiocarbon dating results for the skull found at the bone mill, which shows it is 759 years old, this pre-dates the bone mill by several centuries. See the skull page for the full report.

Graham Bartlett          Interactive Plan          Volunteer           Previous      Next