Museum pulls together a community kaleidoscope

Nov 5 2008 Surrey Herald

Novelist EM Forster and former boyband member Matt Willis from Busted are among the Elmbridge residents featuring in an exhibition at the borough's museum. Mark Goode reports

Elmbridge residents - past and present, famous and obscure - will feature in an exhibition that opens at Elmbridge Museum on Saturday.

Museum officer Joanna Tapp, 23, of Weybridge, is putting the finishing touches to 'Heads and tails: the many faces of Elmbridge', which is designed to show residents the borough's history, who makes up the community, how and when.

Matt Willis from pop group Busted is one of the celebs who has been given a place at the exhibition.

The 25-year-old lived in Molesey and was a pupil at the primary school Chandlers Field in West Molesey.

Novelist E M Forster who lived in Monument Green, Weybridge with his mother between 1904 and 1925 is another.

In all, about 50 pictures of residents will be on display, along with their personal stories and their significance to the community, including writers R C Sheriff and George Meredith, and the Princess Alice who lent her name to the Esher hospice.

Joanna, who is a former Cambridge student and has lived in Weybridge for most of her life, said: "The museum is in Weybridge but we wanted to look at the community as a whole and place all the people who make up the area.

"The initial idea was to look at famous people from the past but when I started investigating I saw the contemporary angle and wanted to include less well known people who were interesting in their own right." Admission to the exhibition, which opens on Saturday and runs until January 21, is free.

Joanne has been putting the displays together since August, and has been out and about in the borough meeting and photographing shop owners, publicans, and longtime Elmbridge residents for inclusion.

She said: "We are trying to find links between things, and have i n c l u d e d Victorian teachers and contemporary teach-ers.

"A few of the girls at the museum have also been inter-viewing people - one spoke to a woman who is almost 100 and has lived in the same house in Weybridge all her life."