Trust Council of Management meeting – January 2013

Today (25th January), the Trust’s Council of Management held their quarterly meeting in the upstairs office at Roman Circus House. The meeting was chaired for the last time by out-going Trust chairman Mark Hassall, supported by incoming chairman Nick Wickenden, and Howard Brooks of the Trust took the minutes.

As it was the chairman’s last meeting, we had drinks and nibbles, and Trust staff joined the meeting for director Philip Crummy’s speech of thanks and presentation of a gift to Mark – the gift was a replica Roman bust of Clytie from the British Museum shop.

Mark Hassall MA FSA has been chairman of the Trust for 26 years. He is Emeritus Reader in the Archaeology of the Roman Provinces  at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Nick Wickenden was formerly of the Chelmsford Archaeological Trust and is now Chelmsford Borough Council’s museums manager, based at Chelmsford Museum.

With many thanks to Mark Hassall, and welcome to Nick Wickenden, the new chairman of the Trust’s Council of Management.

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The image shows the replica bust of Clytie; the original was made between 40 and 50 AD and is in the collection of the British Museum. Clytie was a water nymph in a story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She fell in love with Apollo, the sun god, and sat watching him traverse the sky in his chariot; after nine days she was turned into a sunflower and, all day and forever, sunflowers turn their faces to follow the sun. You can see that the bust of Clytie is framed by sunflower petals.

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