Due to a refurbishment of the Castle, the Museum was forced to seek alternative storage for many of our artefacts off-site. In addition, our collection of local history related items is ever growing so adequate and effective storage solutions were needed. In particular, we needed racking to house our complete collection of the Framlingham Weekly News. Having established that the conditions in what is known by us as the ‘pig pen’ (the units are in fact converted pig-pens) were suitable to store paper, we then looked at the available options. For the Castle storage we had already purchased some ‘Big Dug’ racking so the most cost effective solution seemed to be to expand this system to accommodate our increased requirement. Cost research endorsed this view.
The increase in our costs due to the additional storage rental of nearly £1000 p.a, means that our funds are under even more pressure, and we looked to AfSM for a small grant to help with the capital cost of the racking. This is against a background of our wishing, as and when we can get funding, to undertake a major refurbishment of the Museum to improve both our artefact housing from an environmental perspective and the overall interpretation and display. In the Museum damp is always a major concern. For this we need to try to retain some funds towards our capital contribution. A situation familiar to many AfSM members!
We are very grateful to AfSM for providing the funding for the racking. As you can see from the photograph, a Trustee working party was assembled to erect the shelving and we can now store the artefacts and expand the collection, ultimately leading to us being able to have a greater variety on show to the public.
By Alison Bowman