Our community consultation, on September 19th, as part of Open House weekend was a great success with over 200 people attending. Members of our project team were on hand to explain proposals so far. We plan to house new facilities in a small welcome building, new interpretation and exhibitions across the site and a home for the amazing Thames Tunnel Archive. This will create a more consistent and engaging visitor experience and allow the museum to host a wider range of activities and events in the Engine House, Tunnel Shaft and on our Piazza to the north.
The project team have produced a Conservation Plan for the site which has pulled together existing information on site history, new maps and illustrations of the buildings and examines the numerous architectural features that provide clues to the site’s many alterations and amendments. We also want to shout out to our volunteer Maribeth to whom we are immensely grateful for writing our Archives Conservation Plan.
The community consultation and Conservation Plan as well as wider discussions with local organisations and businesses are helping us refine and develop our proposals. The next stage is to take these proposals to the local planners and Historic England before our submission, next spring, to the Heritage Fund for the money to allow us to make these plans a reality.
We are continuing to gather comments and feedback shared with us via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and email ( hello@thebrunelmuseum.com ) so please get in touch!
We spent the morning at Surrey Quays shopping centre on Thursday 22nd October, asking shoppers what they knew about the museum and what activities they would like us to put on there. We had lots of visitors to our popup stall and it was great to hear that half of the people we spoke to already knew about the museum. The comments we received are feeding into the development plans for the Heritage Fund project. (Picture shows Clara and Jessie with our stall.)