Wrexham Memories: Heritage Lottery Fund awards £950,000 to Wrexham Museum

By Flintshire Chronicle on Apr 30, 09 02:11 PM in 2000 onwards

THE Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has announced its support to establish Wrexham Museum as a major contemporary attraction.

Wrexham County borough Council has been awarded £950,000 toward the first of its four-phase Wrexham Community Heritage Project to redevelop the museum and increase the annual number of users from 15,000 to 53,000.

The grant will enable the council to open up more of the museum building and its collections to the public, increase educational opportunities, provide attractive visitor facilities and create two jobs.

Jennifer Stewart, head of HLF Wales, said: "This project will give Wrexham the museum it truly deserves and create a focal point for the town. The redevelopment will mean thousands more people will be able to enjoy the collections and learn about the rich history on their doorstep."

The museum is located in a conservation area and based in a 19th Century Grade II listed building constructed as militia barracks and later converted into a police station and courthouse.

It is considered to be one of the finest buildings in Wrexham with UK-wide significance.
The collections housed in the museum consist of about 6,000 artefacts telling the story of Wrexham's social, industrial and archaeological past, including the Welsh Football Collection.

But, due to limited space and lack of essential environmental controls, only 2% of the collection is on display.

To take the Museum into the 21st century the grant will fund new interactive, family friendly and community based displays and an upgraded gallery to act as a portal to the National Museums and Galleries Wales and National Library of Wales. The new displays will enable a greater proportion of the Museum's collections to go on display and provide local people with access to a diverse range of historic material from John Charles's football shirt to the Brymbo Man a Bronze Age Beaker burial.

The displays in the new central gallery, together with the adjacent A. N. Palmer Centre, will encourage the local community to contribute their own knowledge and information about their local heritage through the capture and recording of personal and community histories and photographs to create a publicly owned knowledge bank. This information will also be available to virtual visitors via the museum's website.

The colourful story of the building and its previous occupants will be relayed to visitors through interpretation panels and guided tours. A voluntary blue badge scheme for guided walks of the town starting and ending at the museum will be developed. The council are looking to actively recruit another 50 volunteers from the general public to be involved behind the scenes as well as interacting with visitors and giving guided tours.

Two new jobs will be created to carry out a programme of community activity, using road shows and exhibitions at leisure centres, libraries, events and open days to stimulate interest from educational groups and others who might not traditionally visit a museum. Local people will be consulted in all aspects of the Museum's development and used as a sounding board for specific displays, with the aim of encouraging them to explore their heritage further and increase the annual number of museum users from 15,000 to 53,000.

The Museum is unique in Wales in that is shares the building with an archive service and the local studies centre. As part of the development the education room will be kitted out with computers, videoconference facilities and electronic whiteboards to enable remote learning opportunities for schools and the wider community.

One of our aims is to ensure that more people can get close to and explore their heritage on a regular basis, and Wrexham Council are ensuring everyone in the area has the chance to do that. The blue badge guides, volunteer programme and the publicly owned knowledge bank are exciting ways for the community to get involved and ensure the longevity of the Museum."

Deputy council leader and lead member for communities and performance Cllr Bob Dutton, said The HLF are to be congratulated on their concrete financial support for the Authority's vision of development of its Museum service and I would like to thank the officers of the HLF, their Consultants and the Council's own staff and my own colleague Councillors for the hard work expertise and commitment which have brought the project to this initial stage successfully. Tthe funding would give the town a museum to be proud of and would be a magnet for researchers and visitors. HLF has a strong record of supporting major projects and their help in taking the Wrexham Museum development forward will ensure the citizens of the County Borough will have a centre to be proud of and which will be a magnet for researchers of history and visitors to the area".