Leadbitter – based in the Abingdon Science Park – won the building contract and will start putting up scaffolding next week. Their brief is “The restoration of the existing listed building, the construction of a new lift from street level to basement, upgrading exhibition spaces…”
They target completion in 8 months time. Key Dates taken from the first of their regular newsletters are:
17th January – Official Start Date
23rd February – First Community Open Morning – between 11am and 1 am where they will chat and answer questions. This is a regular event on the last Wednesday in the month.
29th April – Royal Wedding and Abingdon Bun Throwing Ceremony.
Apart from finding out about building progress, Equal Studio, in charge of the museum side of things, presented their conceptual ideas about how the museum itself would look and were asking for feedback.
They will be able to fit in more display space on three levels for Abingdon history and stories about Abingdon people. The existing display cases will be reused on the top floor, while new multi purpose display cases will be put in the sessions hall …
I really hope that when it’s completed it’s worth the money spent on the museum. I could think of a lot more useful ways to spend £3.5 million on our lovely town.
I think 3.5million is money well spent on a building that is one of the nicest town halls in the country, and the centre point of attraction in our town. I just hope they use the space underneath more, maybe for the occasional brass band or morris dancing or something??
This isn’t just about the museum, although I would argue that a town with Abingdon’s heritage certainly ought to invest in making its heritage accessible to as many people as possible.
It is also about preserving the building, which is listed, historic and an important part of the town’s heritage in itself. It hasn’t had any serious work done on it for 50 years and a large part of this project is to improve the roof and fabric of the building. £3.5m is not a huge amount of money in this context.
It is also the case that, because the building itself is important, the majority of the money is coming from national Heritage funding. If this scheme were not going ahead, that money would not necessarily be available to Abingdon.