Bespoke Museum Smells Bring History to Life
Nothe Fort has unveiled three new smell stations to help visitors imagine what life was like for Victorian soldiers.
The smell stations feature in Nothe Fort's Victorian Gun Deck, where soldiers would have worked and slept. Three bespoke scents used include:
- The soldiers' meals (an uninspiring diet of boiled meat); this scent was informed by military cookbooks.
- The soldiers' sleeping area which would have been damp, smelling of tobacco and men returning from the local pub; this scent was informed by reports of hygiene, airflow and crowded conditions in 19th Century British forts.
- The scent of gunsmoke; soldiers would have smelt the smoke from the huge guns where they slept nearby, and ventilation holes in the ceilings suggest how odious it might have become.
The sources that informed the scents were provided by Nothe Fort's historians.
Once the historical scents were ready, we advised on the smell station designs, and the final structures were built by the Fort's team. The scents came in the form of Aroma Blocks, which are the most popular product for smell stations. To control the potency of one of the stronger scents, we recommended the simple approach of placing some paper on top of the Aroma Block to limit the number of scent particles rising.
The smell stations were a successful way of bringing an ambient-feeling effect to the Victorian Gun Deck whithout filling the air with scents. The dry diffusion of the Aroma Blocks also minimised conservation and dampness risks (considering existing damp issues in the space) that atomisation could have brought.
Liam R. Findlay, Historical Scenting Consultant at AromaPrime, says: 'It was a pleasure to bring out Nothe Fort's olfactory heritage and to help visitors imagine past conditions in a very immediate way. I hope that the scents, with their striking presence, encourage a sense of empathy towards the Victorian soldiers. If nothing else, I have noticed how great the scents are at sparking lively conversations among visitors!'
You can hear Liam discuss the immersive benefits of scent in the latest episode of Skip the Queue:
