Do you remember the Lindow Man Campaign?

As most local residents will know, back in 1984, the 2,000 year old body of Lindow Man was found in a bog near Wilmslow. It was the most complete find of its kind recovered in Britain.

In 1987, after preservation work it was displayed at the Manchester Museum. The people of the North West were delighted with the find and flocked to see him... but they became outraged when they realised that the display was in fact temporary and the Lindow Man would be returned to the British Museum who claimed ownership.

I sent a letter to the Manchester Evening News hoping they would mount a campaign to Keep Lindow Man in the North, where he belongs. I had started a campaign before I'd even realised it. We had the support of virtually all the MPs in the North West, hundreds of letters of support, huge press & TV coverage.

I wrote the lyrics to a campaign song "Lindow Man We Want You Back Again". A friend of mine, musician & record producer Phil Hampson (who also produced "Matchstalk Men" by Brian & Michael) wrote the music and produced the soundtrack.

Liz Brown, the music teacher at Lindow School, did a wonderful job rehearsing the children's choir and recorder group. Colleagues from Granada Television, where I worked at the time, filmed it for a news item - with the children wearing Celtic costumes walking near the Black Lake on Lindow Common, and also in the recording studios at Sale. GTV put together a video of the song for us... which I described as "The world's first video petition" (I have never been contradicted!)

I then led a delegation of MPs to the British Museum and presented this video petition. And yet, with all that support, publicity and pressure, we failed!

What I hadn't realised at the time was that, although we had the backing of 99 percent of the people in the North West, not one North West museum professional, anthropologist or archeologist (in 1987) gave the campaign support. It was obvious that they were totally terrified of offending the British Museum in case they missed out on future patronage, loans and handouts from the BM. So I called off the campaign. No point in it really.

Then a few weeks ago I read an interview with Alan Garner in The Times about the 50th anniversary edition of his book "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" which is set in Alderley Edge.

In the interview he talks about how, as a child, he would paddle a makeshift raft on the Black Lake of Lindow, two miles from the Edge: "It's a gloomy place and around it is a peat bog," he says. "I read about the finding of human bodies in Scandinavia and I knew why Lindow scared me... Here was the ideal place for a bog body. I knew he was there. That was in 1957. In 1984 peat cutters found him. Grimnir (one of the characters in the book) is now in the British Museum and is known as Lindow Man."

This newspaper article rekindled my interest in it and I reached for my old copy of the VHS video. I asked my son to make a DVD so I could play it again. He suggested putting in on YouTube so that the children, now grown up, could download it for themselves.

Then we thought it would be great to let local people know about the video via wilmslow.co.uk. Maybe you were in the children's choir at Lindow School back in November 1987, or you know somebody who was?

I have no plans to resurrect the campaign... in fact I think the British Museum have made a horrible job of preservation. They freeze-dried the body which has made him look not like a human being but a kipper!

They're welcome to him but I did think it was worth sharing this video from 23 years ago to see of anyone remembers the campaign.

This is a guest post by Barbara O'Brien.

Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net).

Tags:

Lindow Moss, Lindow Peat Bog