Long As You're Living

Long As You're Living

Today we have gallivanted to Chichester and paid our first ever visit to the brand new Novium Museum which opened its doors to the public at the weekend.

Our credentials for offering our opinions are pretty robust. On the Roman angle we have been members at nearby Bignor Roman Villa for 4 seasons now and have made three outings to Fishbourne Roman Palace (where one of the mosaics at the Novium used to live) in the past twelve months. We have also been in search of treasures from Roman times at the Museum of London and the British Museum and the Roman Baths in Bath within the last year.

On the Museums front last year we made home education gallivants to over 20 museums and already this year we have added a further 10 to that list. In addition we were recently on the judging panel for the Kids In Museums Telegraph Family Friendly Awards and were involved with assessing Haslemere Museum which went on to win the award.

So, The Novium, well the entrance is very impressive inside the  modern architectural cream box, which, by the way, is not at all signposted from the town centre or shops in any direction visible to us, are the stars of the show really the remains of the Roman Baths located on the actual site and the Mosaic on the wall. The atmosphere is enhanced with fabulous projections of images of Romans using the baths really bringing the area to life. If I had written a book with a Roman theme that would be the perfect place for a book launch party sipping processco and eating olives.

The second two floors have a variety of exhibits some of which were in the previous museum (which the trio adored) and some new. The highlight for the children was trying on the various helmets from different historical periods and discussing how heavy they were.

S, 7,  was disappointed not to find the Petworth Hoard and the Roman Coins she so enjoyed at the old museum. As we were leaving she said, totally spontaneously, "It is not as good as the old one." and Et , 5, said it was too stuffy using both meanings of the word stuffy he told me! My best part of the old site was the amber sculpture outside.

For me the biggest drawback is that the Museum is not free. £7.00 for adults and £2.50 each for children over 4. One of the benefits of other town centre museums that we enjoy like Worthing and Horsham is that we can just pop in and look at a small area connected to something we might be working on at the time rather than feeling obligated to stay for ages. 

My children and I enjoy museums, more than most it is probably fair to say, and even including meeting up with 4 or 5 other home educating families we were only inside for just about an hour. The total entrance fee for us is close to the cost of us travelcard in to central London where we could enjoy many Roman treasures free of charge.

That said, it was an enjoyable morning and I am pleased we've seen inside. After the museum we had our lunch in Priory Park and then O asked to go tot the Wetlands and see the ducks. There are still a surprising number of small ducklings around and we had a great walk, bumping into two more home educating families we know whilst we were there! A walk was a welcome end to the day.

Home via the library for more DC Super Heroes

Operation Austerity- We are members at the Wetlands

Car Park £2.70
Museum £12.00
Duck Food at the Wetlands £2.50

No exiting through either gift shop or cafe treats for us!

Some of our friends we went with will blog the day too.

This is my photo of the day today

Here is Weed's post