Fleur Way-Jones may be officially retiring from her position as Albany Museum's Historian and Curator, but her almost thirty year association with the museum will not end there.
Fleur Way-Jones may be officially retiring from her position as Albany Museum's Historian and Curator, but her almost thirty year association with the museum will not end there.
In her long museum career Fleur Way-Jones has received a wide range of interesting donations from all over the world, many of which remain close to her heart. If she had to name a few though, she would have to mention the Hay Vase, which has a rich and colourful history and was named after George Hay a newspaper editor who fought for the freedom of the press.
Other favourites include paintings by Thomas Baines, and also the Harmasdale Addo Elephant project. Fleur Way-Jones joined the Albany Museum in 1983 as a family researcher sponsored by the 1820 Settlers Association, a position she held for three years, before taking up the role of registrar.
She spent the following decade documenting museum artefacts, before becoming a curator of the museum's exhibitions. In 1996 she became chairperson of the South African Museum Association, of which she is still a committee member, and later started a disability committee for the museum in which she concentrated on ways to improve access for disabled people.
In 2003 she took part in a learnership programme where she taught adult students about the heritage section of the museum. Apart from her work at the museum, Way-Jones is probably best known for her local historical tours which have become very popular over the years.
One of the tours, called Stately Homes & Old School Ties, visits two of the oldest schools in the area – 150-year-old St Andrew's College, and DSG (Diocesan School for Girls) – as well as a number of Victorian homes and the oldest working post box in South Africa in Worcester Street.
Saints, Sinners and Students, focuses on the early history of Grahamstown, and visits the Chapel of St Mary and All Angels, now called the Rhodes Chapel, in the grounds of the former Grahamstown Training College, two jails and Rhodes University.
Settlers Skeletons shows people around Market Square, where Way-Jones says they usually go around to local houses where the owners showcase items of historical interest and significance and tell the stories behind them. She points out that each tour is unique as they depend on the availability of the houses on those days.
Way-Jones says she hopes to carry on the tours after her retirement, as well as visiting her children overseas. She will continue to remain active in the museum for some time as she is still involved in projects such as the Chinese and Xhosa textiles exhibition, which she hopes will be entitled South Mist East.
She is also working alongside the Rhodes University Drama department towards the 200 year Bicentenary celebrations that will be taking place next year.
