LAST week's mystery object brought a flood of replies.

And there were correct guesses from Andrew Simmons, Gus Stewart, John Waterhouse and the Capstick family from Hellifield.

They all said it was a pharmaceutical pill maker - and there were some detailed explanations.

Gus explained: "The prescription would be made up on the slab and the resulting paste was then forced into the wooden slots and pushed out and sliced off into individual pills. My mother worked in a dispensing chemists in the twenties and she certainly used something very like this."

And John added: "The object looks to me like a pill making machine used in a pharmacy. The one shown is incomplete, as there should be a slider, which slides across the top of the machine and cuts the pill material into equal pieces.

"To make the pills, the pill material, which would look like white marzipan, would be rolled into an even sausage shape and placed across the corrugated part of the machine and the slider drawn across it. This was cut it into equal pieces, which were then rolled into little balls. These were sometimes coated to make them more attractive."

Craven Museum tells us this particular machine was made of wood, metal and marble by the pharmaceutical equipment producer S Maw Sons & Thompson, London.

It consists of two parts - a base and handle - with half cylindrical metal channels that fit together to form perfect cylinders.

The chemist would mix the ingredients on the marble slab into a paste, through which the roller was pushed to create the tablet shape. The finished pill would then drop out into the tray at the end.

Other commonly recognised tools of the Victorian chemist would have included the apothecary chest and the pestle and mortar, which would have been used in the preparation and supply of medicines.

We also had two late guesses to the previous week's curiosity - the hand-operated vacuum cleaner.

One came from Phyllis Capstick and the other from former home economist Karen Megginson.

Karen said: "When I worked as a home economist for Ilkley College we had a selection of old household items and had one of these in our little museum. When the campus was closed in 1999 it was sent (along with all the other historical pieces) to Bradford Council's education department for them to use around schools. I must say modern day vacuum cleaners are much more efficient!"

Guesses regarding this week's object should be emailed to news@cravenherald.co.uk

All the items are on display at Craven Museum and Gallery, which is located in Skipton Town Hall.