This month Horsham Museum reaches its 125th anniversary: a remarkable achievement which they will be celebrating formally in November.
Our Museum is always a great asset and right now anyone desperate for term to resume may be delighted to hear that there are ongoing childrens’ summer holiday events featuring Dragons, Knights, Unicorns, Outer Space and Superheroes – what more could one want?
The current exhibition, “Frankenstein”, is also “family friendly”. It clearly also has a local link – author Mary Shelley having eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley (not only local but the son of the local MP)!
It was lovely in the recent exhibition on Marriage to see on display the wedding photos of local people – celebrating the happiest of days and bringing the story right up to date.
The exhibition challenged pre-conceptions about the history of marriage. Anglo-Saxon brides received an asset called a “morning gift” or “morgengifu” which was theirs to keep, its memory survives in names such as Morgay Wood and Mayfield. She could legally leave a marriage taking half the family assets.
It was the Middle Ages that defined Marriage as “unbreakable”. Until the 19th century the wealthy sought private Acts of Parliament to divorce while in Horsham as elsewhere “Wife Sales” took place. (It was interesting to discover that these were usually pre-arranged between the wife, husband and “buyer” as a way of formalising a “divorce”.)
Attitudes to marriage continue to change though family breakdown often produces the most heart-rending constituency cases.
I recently met a senior partner in one of Horsham’s long established law firms, DMH Stallard. He has, sadly, to deal with family break-down routinely and views our current laws as unhelpful. For a couple whose marriage has irretrievably broken down, unless they wish to wait for a lengthy period of separation which often they do not, the law requires one or other to be “at fault”.
He fears that this starts the couple off on the worst possible, confrontational, footing, which is very sad especially with children involved.
Introducing “no fault” divorce would be a major change but I would be interested in views on this (and, as ever, other issues) to Jeremy.quin.mp@parliament.uk.
Photo caption: Visiting Horsham Museum with members of the Museum team earlier in the summer for the exhibition on “Love and Marriage”