Bentley Priory Museum in Harrow has secured an £83,000 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
A new project, dubbed ‘Clerk Special Duties’, will capture and share the stories of the women whose wartime contribution was vital but silenced by The Official Secrets Act.
The fund will help the museum to tell the untold story of women who worked with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) within ‘The Dowding System’. The system operated the world’s first ground-controlled command and control, which was pivotal to victory during the Battle of Britain in 1940 during WW2.
Bentley Priory Museum’s director, Eleanor Pulfer-Sharma: “The Heritage Fund grant will enable the Museum to reach new audiences through engagement with our WAAF collection in innovative ways. By sharing the important untold stories of these formidable women, we seek to inspire a new generation with the STEM subjects that were so vital to the Clerk Special Duties roles.”
The Museum, located in Stanmore, is looking for volunteers to help with research for the project and curation of a temporary exhibition due to be displayed in the museum later in 2023 with training provided.
Duties project, contact the Museum’s Collections Manager by 20 February. collectionsproject@bentleypriorymuseum.org.uk
In addition to digitising the museum’s existing WAAF collection, it is seeking to collect WAAF photographs and artefacts to digitise, with families of WAAF veterans who worked as Clerk Special Duties invited to support the project through a new ‘Families Forum’.
The project will launch with a day of family activities on Saturday 11 February at Bentley Priory Museum, which marks International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
