A new temporary exhibition has been unveiled at a popular museum – with a special guest in attendance to mark the occasion.

Prince Albert was at Beccles And District Museum last Tuesday evening (September 4) for the opening of the new temporary exhibition – A Town Fit for Heroes.

The stallion Prince Albert, from Horse Drawn Enterprises, was ridden by Nigel Dix and dressed in the uniform of a Cheshire Yeoman from the First World War. The exhibition, curated by Zane Blanchard, is the last in a series of exhibitions held at the museum to mark the First World War years. It commemorates the centenary of the ending of the conflict in 1918 and examines some aspects of what took place in Beccles after the guns fell silent.

The Armistice of November 11 was set against a backdrop of economic collapse, pandemic, revolution and social change. Change – and drastic change at that – seemed the only constant during the post-war turmoil experienced across much of Europe and the world.

How Beccles was affected by the legacy of the terrible war and by the pandemic, which resulted in the deaths of some 50 million people worldwide – more than the total number of military and civilian casualties and deaths during the whole of The Great War, are all investigated in the exhibition.

The exhibition, A Town Fit for Heroes, is open at Beccles and District Museum, in Ballygate, until the museum closes for the winter on October 31. Admission to the museum and the exhibition is free.