WHEN Dr Paul Robinson retires as curator of Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes next month, he will not say goodbye to archaeology.

"I can't do nothing, but I don't know what I will do yet. It certainly won't be gardening and decorating," said Dr Robinson, who will shortly be 65. The Devizes museum has been his life for 34 years.

How about going on archaeological digs? "I hadn't thought of that," he said, "but not in this country. Perhaps Greece or Egypt. That would be very exciting."

Born and raised in Berkshire, Dr Robinson moved to London with his family in the 1950s. He studied archaeology at Birmingham University, where he met his wife Diane.

They were married while studying and the demands of a growing family led him to take a job as assistant curator at Stafford Borough Museum.

The museum disappeared with local government reorganisation in 1974 and Dr Robinson applied for the job at Devizes Museum. He has not looked back.

He said: "You can't ask for a better place to live and work than in Wiltshire. The museum has always been a friendly place to work and Devizes is warm and friendly as well.

"Over the years there have been opportunities to work in Belfast, Glasgow and Liverpool, but the prospect of going to work in a big, dirty city did not attract me."

He has seen the museum develop from the fiefdom of ex-military officers, many who served in India, to a much more public facility, which goes out of its way to attract local people.

He said: "When I first came here it was very much a male-dominated domain and there were no more than 7,000 visitors a year. We were open from 11am to 4pm in the winter and 11am to 5pm in the summer.

"Now we are more concerned with the displays, with exhibitions in the art gallery and we had upwards of 20,000 visitors last year."

During his time the museum's collection has doubled, but he stresses, not necessarily in importance.

He said: "Most of the more important items were already in the collection, but we have had some very notable additions."

Among these were 20 silver coins from the Box hoard discovered in 1992, including items from the reigns of King Stephen and Queen Matilda, who gave Devizes its royal charter in 1141.

Dr Robinson's favourite artefact is a 6,000-year-old jadite axe. He said: "I just love the feel of it. A French research programme was able to identify where it was quarried. It was quarried in northern Italy, shaped in Brittany and then brought to this country with the first settlers.

"It is items like this that make you understand why you came into archaeology in the first place."