Onwards and Upwards: Museum Expansion

2019

The museum has been closed since July 2019, making way for the ‘Onwards and Upwards’ project, our fantastic multi-million-pound expansion of Trowbridge Museum supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Trowbridge Town Council.

We have been busy expanding into the empty floor above, to double our size and bring Trowbridge a brand new museum, with new displays, never before seen objects and interactives for all ages.
All of our objects have now been safety returned from their temporary home at Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire (a former Air Force base!), where they were heat treated to ensure that no nasty pests were stored with them.

In 2019 we started our journey with designers – Smith and Jones, and architects – Architecton, on the finer details of the re-build, bringing Salter’s Home Mill back to life.
We have sinced watched on as Beard Construction made our plans a reality, uncovering original gnarled brickwork which has survived mill fires, building our exciting new learning space, restoring windows which have flooded the space with light and made way for the innovative displays.

machinery on display in the museum

2020

We moved back on site (from our temp. office at The civic) in 2020 excited to set up our offices and get to working on creating the displays, planning to reopen in the Summer.
Then came covid…We’ll say no more.

After a couple months of dining table desks and patchy skype calls we were able to return to our museum and spent the Summer working frantically, trying to claw back lost time.

upper floor and exterior building

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately due to the second lockdown, our access to site was limited once again. Fortunately our team has perfected the art of remote working so we were able to continue preparing the museum to reopen in 2021. We were also delighted to welcome the public back on site for our Christmas pop-up shop in December!

 

2021

We have started the year with more delays brought on by the third national lockdown, however we are continuing to work as hard as possible to reopen the museum as soon as we can!
Whilst our planned opening date may no longer be possible, we are continuing to follow government guidelines and be on site as much as possible to perfect our new displays, ready to open as soon as we are able to.

We promise the wait will be worth it!

As well as our monthly updates, visit our Facebook or Instagram page, as well as our monthly updates for regular news and sneaky behind the scenes snippets.
Any other questions? Feel free to contact us, we love hearing from you!

We look forward to welcoming you again.

museum entrance in The Shires