BBC Hereford and Worcester and museums across the area have today (Monday 18 January) revealed the list of 10 objects they have chosen to tell a history of the two counties and their place in the world. The list of 10 objects can be seen on the BBC Local site, or on the national BBC interactive History of the World website.

The list of 10 objects for Herefordshire and Worcestershire is part of the wider A History of the World project formed out of a unique partnership between the BBC, the British Museum and 350 museums and institutions across the country.

Listeners and viewers will be asked to suggest further objects and can actively participate by uploading photographs of their own objects that have a local or global appeal. At the end of February 2010 it is hoped that each BBC Local website will have an additional “People’s 10 Objects” telling the history of their region and its global connections.

BBC Project manager for the Nations and English Regions, Seamus Boyd, said: “A truly fascinating range of objects has been chosen for each list across English regions. Some of them may have great monetary value, others little or none, but they're priceless in how they bring to life moments from history. This initial collection is just the blueprint to which we hope viewers and listeners will add their own objects and help to create a truly unique and vibrant tapestry of the past.”

Museums locally will be holding events in February half-term to celebrate A History of the World. 

The list of 10 regional objects are as follows:

1. The With Astronomical Mirror (at Museum Resource and Learning Centre)

George Henry With was Head Teacher at Bluecoat School in Hereford and later became Dean of Hereford Cathedral. In the mid 19th Century he was one of the first exponents of silvered mirrors for use in astronomical instruments alongside Reverend Thomas William Webb and Reverend Henry Cooper Key, also of Herefordshire. Webb was the Vicar of Hardwicke and a great populariser of astronomy, Key was Rector of Stretton Sugwas and an early telescope pioneer and inventor. George With made over 200 mirrors for amateur telescopes. His mirrors were seen as brand new technology - reflecting telescopes had previously only used metal speculum mirrors which tarnished quickly and required frequent re-polishing.

2. Mappa Mundi (at Hereford Cathedral)

The Hereford Mappa Mundi is unique in Britain's heritage. An outstanding treasure of the medieval world, it records how 13^th century scholars interpreted the world in spiritual as well as geographical terms. The map bears the name of its author 'Richard of Haldingham or Lafford' (Holdingham and Sleaford in Lincolnshire). Recent research suggests a date of about 1300 for the creation of the map. Mappa Mundi is drawn on a single sheet of vellum (calf skin), the geographical material of the map is contained within a circle measuring 52" in diameter and reflects the thinking of the medieval church with Jerusalem at the centre of the world. Superimposed onto the continents are drawings of the history of humankind and the marvels of the natural world. These 500 or so drawings include around 420 cities and towns, 15 Biblical events, 33 plants, animals, birds and strange creatures, 32 images of the peoples of the world and 8 pictures from classical mythology. Christopher de Hamel, a leading authority on medieval manuscripts, has said of the Mappa Mundi: “... it is without parallel the most important and most celebrated medieval map in any form, the most remarkable illustrated English manuscript of any kind, and certainly the greatest extant thirteenth-century pictorial manuscript.'

3. Spatha Sword (at Hereford Museum and Art Gallery)

Found by a dog walker at the edge of the River Lugg, this rare sword is a remarkable find. It’s a Roman sword, a spatha, dating from the 2nd-3rd century AD. It is one of only eight in the country, most of which were recovered from Roman military sites or graves. The only other Roman sword that, like this sword may be classed as 'accidental loss' is one found near Chichester. This sword is close in size to an example from Augst in Germany. A Roman soldier may have lost it or it is possible that it was a ritual offering in the river to a water god. The iron for the sword may well have come from the nearby Forest of Dean and could have been processed at the metal working site of Ariconium. A modern replica of the spatha sword has just been received by the museum, made by a local craftsman. It shows how the sword might have looked originally, as in the drawings produced for the museum when they first received the sword.

4. Alfred Watkins Bee Meter (at Museum Resource and Learning Centre and Leominster Museum)

Invented by Alfred Watkins, born in Hereford, the Bee Meter was patented in April 1890. It was the first light meter which measured the relative intensity of light through Watkins’ invention of the ‘actinometer’. Having reduced the aperture and plate speeds to numerical values, the actinometer now allowed a numerical value to be assigned to light. The Bee Meter was a pocket calculator for determining exposure, so called because it was small and highly efficient. Watkins began manufacture in a building on Friars Street, Hereford, where the Museum Resource and Learning Centre now stands. Its success was demonstrated when HG Ponting, the photographer on Scott’s Antarctic Expedition in 1910, used a Watkins Meter to produce his amazing landscapes of this then totally unknown continent. When he returned, he wrote to Watkins to tell him that without the meter, the photographs would have been impossible. With this impeccable reference, sales grew and the meters were exported worldwide.

5. St John Medieval Chapel East Window (at St John Medieval Museum and Coningsby Hospital)

The East Window depicts the history of the St John Hospitaller Knights whose influence was far-reaching in the medieval world, particularly in the Holy Land. They stemmed the growth of the Ottoman Empire through the great Siege of Malta in 1565. The window shows St John the Baptist kneeling before Jesus at the River Jordan with the founder of the order, Blessed Gerard, in the centre. At that time, a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was seen to clear pilgrims of all their sins. The window also shows pilgrims being treated by the Hospitaller Knights, the church of the Holy Sepulcre, St Michael weighing the soul of a pilgrim, plus numerous eight pointed stars - symbol of the Knights Hospitallers. The Knights of St John still exist today as the Knights of Malta.  The window was brought from the St John chapel at Harewood Park, Herefordshire when it was deconsecrated in the 1970s.

6. Lord Nelson's Teapot (Worcester Porcelain Museum)

In August 1802, Admiral Nelson and his mistress, the beautiful Emma Hamilton (followed by husband Sir William Hamilton and an admiring crowd), visited Chamberlain’s Worcester china works and spent more than an hour touring all the factory departments. Nelson was full of admiration and ordered an extravagant breakfast, dinner and dessert service. The costly set was to be hand decorated in rich Imari (Oriental style) colours and gold, and emblazoned with Nelson’s full coat of arms with his newly received honours. When Nelson died at Trafalgar in October 1805, Chamberlain had only delivered part of the order and the huge bill for £120, ten shillings and six pence was rather insensitively sent to Emma Hamilton only one week after the hero’s great state funeral in January 1806. Emma’s extravagant lifestyle soon whittled away her fortune and the Worcester Horatia service was dispersed. Today, pieces turn up all over the world.

7. The Last Kidderminster Weave Carpet (from Kidderminster Kidderminster Carpet Museum Trust)

John Pearsall and John Broom were Stuff weavers and are credited as being the first weavers of 'Kidderminster' carpet in 1735. It was a coarse flat weave woven mainly with woollen yarns, patterned with the design visible on both sides in reverse colours meaning that the carpet was reversible. It was more affordable than the expensive hand-knotted or pile carpets available only to the wealthy and was instrumental in bringing carpet to a wider market. The opening of the Staffordshire & Worcestershire canal gave access to world-wide export and so, Kidderminster at the heart of the country, soon became the Woven Carpet Capital of the World. The Kidderminster company, T&A Naylor Ltd, were established power-loom weavers of 'Kidderminster' but in 1932 when moving premises they decided it was time to discontinue the product because of a declining market. In 1932 their looms wove the last length of 'Kidderminster.' However, the town continued to dominate the woven market with other weaves and carpet continues to be produced in the town today.

8. Death Masks (at George Marshall Medical Museum)

These death masks are purportedly of hanged Worcestershire prisoners of the early 19th Century. Convicted prisoners were hanged in the Gaol and their bodies taken via an underground tunnel running from to the Worcester Royal Infirmary to be anatomised by staff and students. We have neither the names of the men represented, nor the details of any phrenological studies made on the masks, and so are left with this tantalising and somewhat macabre glimpse of 19th Century medical 'science' in Worcester. Death masks of criminals were made across the Western world during the early 19th Century. The aim was to attempt to make connections between cranial characteristics and the nature of crimes committed in order to be able to predict future criminal behaviours in others. Phrenology later gained sinister connotations alongside its brief popularity, with numerous advocates of this pseudo-science applying its theories to racial characteristics.

9. Casoar Cap  (at Bewdley Museum)

This cap is from the Special Military School of St Cyr, France. In 1940, after the armistice of France with Germany, Frenchmen escaped from their occupied homeland to prepare to fight for the Freedom of France. General de Gaulle created a military training academy which was housed at Ribbesford House, just a mile from Bewdley in Worcestershire. Bewdley residents came to know the Officer Cadets well, due to their frequent visits to the town. Local people pulled together to make their French visitors feel welcome. This enthusiasm and friendliness led to a lasting bond between the Free French and the people of Bewdley which remains to this day.  The Casoar cap is a ceremonial headdress which would have been worn by the Free French Officer Cadets. This cap was presented to Bewdley Museum by L’Amicale des Cadets de la France Libre in 1999 in a ceremony recognising the role that Bewdley played in assisting the French resistance.

10. Elgar's Gramophone (at Elgar Birthplace Museum)

This gramophone belonged to Sir Edward Elgar, Worcester’s most famous son and England’s greatest composer. Elgar had a long association with the leading recording company of the day, HMV. As well as producing gramophone records, HMV also produced players and, when a significant model was developed, they sent one to him for his approval. This is Elgar’s gramophone from the mid 1920s.  From his first recording session in HMV’s studios in 1914, Elgar embraced the new technology: for the next 20 years he was involved with the development of the gramophone and recording technology. Elgar recorded most of his orchestral music and we have, perhaps uniquely for a great composer, his own interpretations of his music preserved for us to enjoy today.

A History of the World is a unique partnership between the BBC, the British Museum and 350 museums and institutions across the country. At its heart is a landmark series on BBC Radio 4, A History of the World in 100 Objects, broadcast from Monday 18 January.  The series, written and presented by Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum will feature 100 objects from the British Museum’s collection and will tap in to the unique power of objects to tell stories and make connections across the globe.  The project also includes: a CBBC series Relic: Guardians of the Museum broadcast from January 2010; large-scale activity across the Nations and English regions including lists of 10 museum objects on each BBC Local site telling the story of that region; an exciting and interactive digital proposition live from 18 January at www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld; plus an invitation to audiences to offer objects they own to create a unique digital museum online.  The important legacy of A History of the World will be secured through the website and through the work and partnerships across the Nations and English Regions.