Wymondham Museum marks the day war broke out

Wymondham Heritage Museum is staging a special exhibition to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the second world war.Entitled Wymondham gets ready for war, 1939, it runs from today until October 31 and records how, on the Home Front, ordinary people were involved as never before in the war effort.

Wymondham Heritage Museum is staging a special exhibition to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the second world war.

Entitled Wymondham gets ready for war, 1939, it runs from today until October 31 and records how, on the Home Front, ordinary people were involved as never before in the war effort.

The museum has a collection of photographs, records, stories and memories of the voluntary effort in Wymondham, already under way in early 1939.

Visitors are invited to go along and see if they can find their relatives mentioned in the accounts of the Air Raid Precautions work, evacuation service, Fire Service and First Aid whose organisations were well established by the outbreak of war.

By April 1939, Dorothy Cautley, commandant of the local Red Cross, had been holding anti-gas training and members had formed First Aid parties, a mobile unit and also organised a major first aid point at the Priory in Middleton Street, Wymondham.

In September 1939 the Fire Brigade committee ordered some practice incendiary bombs costing 1s 3d each (6p) and, later, jackets at 30s 11d (�1 55p) and trousers at 10s 6d (53p). By the time they arrived the prices had risen to 33s 8d and 11s.

The museum is open Monday to Saturday from 10am - 4pm and the first Sunday in the month from 2-4pm.