The Object Exchange

The Object Exchange is a living museum in which guests are asked to donate items and objects of use/beauty/intrigue related in some way to Watchet, their stay there or other relevance (there are no hard and fast rules!) Guests then record the stories behind their object on luggage tags; in turn, guests can take others’ mementos away with them. However we ask that the stories recorded upon the luggage tags remain tied to the rope suspending the staircase. This collection will be recorded and form part of an ongoing research and publication into spaces and how people use and interpret them.

By the very nature of the continuously changing interior, no two stays in the pod will ever be the same!

To reflect this, much of the material used has been either recycled or re-purposed: from the long-ago dismantled Elizabethan house beams (carpenters marks intact) cleaned up, rebated, mortise & tenoned, and fashioned into the solid bed frame; to the “Steamer Storage”, quite literally a Chest of Chests, whereby scrappy old steamer trunks were upcycled into drawers and cupboards; and not forgetting that bath (which up until finding recent fame enjoyed a life of relative solitude as a water trough for sheep in the field adjacent George’s workshop).