Jane is proud caretaker of renowned Roman antiquities at Senhouse

Now, as museum manager, she looks after the largest collection of Roman military altars and inscriptions ever found on a single site in Britain.

It is also the oldest antiquarian collection still existing in the country and includes a sequence of annually dedicated military altars dating back to the reign of the emperor Hadrian and beyond.

This gives first-hand information about the garrisons posted at the fort, where they came from, the names of the commanding officers, and the gods they worshiped.

Jane said the story of the Senhouse family as collectors is fascinating. The collection was first recorded in the 1570s when John Senhouse was praised by William Camden, the Elizabethan antiquary, for his careful preservation of the Roman site and the collection. 

Jane said she did not like school history - learning dates and reigns of kings but was fascinated by archaeology.

She was lucky with parents who took her to museums, galleries and heritage sites from an early age, which fostered her interests.

"As a child, I even had my own little museum in the garden shed, displaying all the bits and pieces that I found in the garden."

The Duke of Gloucester being shown the Senhouse Roman Museum and the remains of the adjacent Roman fort with lead archaeologist Tony Wilmott and museum manager Jane Laskey (Image: Newsquest)

Jane said she moved to Cumbria by accident: "I intended to spend a summer climbing in the Lake District and sort of forgot to go home."

She came to Maryport and joined the Friends of the Senhouse Museum when it first opened to the public in 1990.

"I started to volunteer at the museum in 1997 when the lovely Carol Grey was the Museum Manager and she offered me a job as Museum Assistant in 1998.

"I became the manager in 2002, in my final year of a degree in Archaeology and Heritage Management at the Cumbria Institute of the Arts in Carlisle. I later studied for an MA in Museum Studies by distance learning at Leicester University."

Jane said she delights in helping people who want to research the collection - whether local people of PhD students!

"I am very passionate about the museum's role in enthusing and engaging everyone with their heritage and what objects can tell us about the people that lived here before us."