The Gazette has joined forces with a Devizes museum to help it win a maximum grant next year. Anyone who goes to the museum with a copy of the paper will be allowed in for free.

LEWIS COWEN joined children from St Joseph's School to see what it has to offer.

WILTSHIRE Archaeological and Natural History Society has recruited the help of the Gazette and Herald to encourage more people through the doors at the Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Long Street, Devizes.

In order to qualify for its maximum grant from Wiltshire County Council and Kennet District Council, the society needs to have had at least 20,000 visitors in the year up to the end of March.

So far, visitor numbers are 3,500 short of the target and the society is now doing all it can to promote its renowned collection.

Though entry on Sundays and Mondays is free and only £1 for adults any other day of the week, anyone turning up to the museum carrying a copy of the Gazette and Herald until the end of the month can get in free.

Children from St Joseph's RC Primary School brought their copies along last week and enjoyed a guided tour through the galleries.

Museum curator Dr Paul Robinson said: "We have the best Bronze Age collection outside London, and that's official. We have been invited to send our collection of gold artefacts to Halle in Germany to go on display beside the celebrated Nebra disc, which was featured on TV recently."

One of the Devizes items that will be making the trip is a large lozenge-shaped piece of gold, engraved with lines, which was found on the chest of a man unearthed during a Wiltshire excavation.

Opinion is divided over its function, some saying that it is just a decorative breast adornment while others insist it is a sophisticated surveying tool.

The museum also boasts other impressive displays, which go back even further than the Bronze Age finds of 1,600 BC that were excavated from the Bush Barrow at Stonehenge in the early 19th century.

In the natural history section, next to fossils of pleiosaurs, icthyosaurs and plesiosaurs which swam in the primeval seas which covered Wiltshire 100 million years ago, there are relics of exotic animals like lynx, giant deer, woolly rhino and mammoth which roamed the early Salisbury Plain.

The earliest record of humans inhabiting Wiltshire date from 500,000 years ago, with the rough-hewn stone hand axes of the Old Stone Age or Palaeolithic period, discovered in hilltop and river valley sites throughout the county.

More impressive are the Neolithic arrow heads and axe heads dating from 4,000 to 3,000 BC and the exquisite hand-crafted pottery with its delicate decoration. Gold items like armlets and belt buckles are well in evidence, although only reproductions are on display for the sake of security.

Dr Robinson said: "These people were wonderful craftsmen but where is all the wood, fabric, stories and legends? We have lost so much and we can only envy Egyptologists who can examine artefacts that look as though they were made yesterday. That is the benefit of a dry climate."

There are more fascinating objects in the Saxon and medieval rooms, but an exhibition of particular interest to local people is the Bygone Devizes display of old photographs of the town, including the earliest known image of the town, the Bear Assembly Rooms, where the Corn Exchange now stands in the Market Place, taken around 1857. The assembly rooms were lovingly dismantled and re-erected behind the Bear Hotel, now forming the hotel's ballroom suite.

Dr Robinson would like to display more of the town's history in a new exhibition hall when finances permit. He said: "We still want to do a Devizes history display. We have had plans for it for a number of years."

The museum is as much about natural history as it is about archaeology and its nature section is particularly fascinating to children. As well as early fossils, there are displays of stuffed animals and birds, including a male and female Great Bustard.

The Bustard became extinct in Britain in the 19th century, largely as a result of man's hunting. The display explains how a scheme to reintroduce the species in the 1970s failed and how a new attempt is being made this summer.

But the future of the museum is at risk if the full amount of the grant is not forthcoming from local authorities. Dr Robinson said: "I cannot over emphasise how much we rely on this money for our work here. If we don't get it, it will be very serious for us. So I urge as many people as possible to bring along their copies of the Gazette and get in free to see some of the wonderful things we have here."