[Mithalwen]

Oh well, I did go to the Castle Museum in York, on my first trip north of Birmingham about 20 years ago ..and it had just been refurbished and the cobbled streets, the furnished rooms and the interactive exhibits (primitive by the standard of day but VCR and microwaves were expensive luxuries and the VIC 20) was at the cutting edge of home computer tecnology - in short we "still thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea") seemed the height of sophistication to someone whose previous experience of museum had been dead animals or model ships in glass cases.

So it doesn't really fit in with my idea of the Mathom House - I am sure it was a lot more haphazard .... and given the Hobbit attitude to study, a lot more amateurish. I used to know a woman who was a curator at a county museum and they were given the collection of a small public (ie private) school which was either closing or just needed the space. This consisted of various artifacts that old boys had donated over the years, sent back from their travels or service in "the colonies". Now one of the items was a gilded piece of wood which had been labelled "part of an Egyptian head-dress". Now the curator looked at it and thought it was Egyptian, but although it looked familiar she couldn't immediately place it. She giggled for days once the light dawned - it was the beard of an Egyptian statue and for about 70 years it had been displayed upside down. Now I am sure it is that kind of enthusiastic ineptness that characterised the hobbit mathom house...