Countdown is on for treasure trove launch
Paisley’s new £3.7million museum facility — believed to be a first for a UK High Street — is preparing to open its doors.
And Paisley: The Secret Collection will house tens of thousands of items from Renfrewshire’s collections.
It will be based in a purposebuilt publicly-accessible storage unit in former retail premises and aims at bringing new footfall into the town centre.
Paisley will find out within a fortnight whether it will be crowned the first Scottish place — and first ever town — to win the prestigious title UK City of Culture title.
This is awarded every four years by the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and Paisley could lift the crown for 2021.
The bid is taking place as part of a wider push to transform Paisley’s future by using its internationally- significant heritage and cultural assets to turn it into a key destination for visitors and events.
Councillors and bid bosses believe by using its unique past to inject new life into the town centre, Paisley can serve as an example to struggling towns everywhere.
Paisley’s place as the onetime home of the global thread industry helped it build a massive museum collection — with many of the items donated by the mill-owning Coats and Clarks families.
The collection includes some of the town’s world- famous textiles, plus a mix of ceramics, world cultures, social history, art and sculpture, natural history and local archives, with many of those items unseen by the general public in decades, or longer.
While other areas have publicaccessible museum stores, it is believed Paisley’s is the first on a High Street.
A dedicated team is due to complete the first phase of a major project to populate the store by the end of the year.
Phase two will see thousands more items moved from the town’s main museum — itself initially gifted to the town by the Coats family in 1871 — before it undergoes a £42m revamp to become a world-class destination with the town’s textile heritage at its heart.
The facility will be operated by Renfrewshire Leisure and was funded by Renfrewshire Council as part of a wider push to revitalise the town centre.
Chair of Renfrewshire Leisure, Councillor Lisa-Marie Hughes, got a glimpse of the facility this week.
She said: “It will house some amazing items the people of Paisley and Renfrewshire will never have known were in their midst.
“The timing of the opening is fitting, with a decision due on the town’s UK City of Culture 2021 bid very soon.
“The bid aims to tell Paisley’s untold story and show why we matter to Scotland, the UK and the world, and this facility helps showcase why that is.
“The museum store is also key to the council’s wider plan to revitalise Paisley’s town centre by using our unique selling points to attract visitors and give people new reasons to come into the town.”
The facility is at 9 High Street — in a basement underneath the Bargain Buys store historically occupied by a Littlewoods store — and accessible through a specially- built shop- front entrance.
A number of school groups will be among the first to see inside the store, with St Mary’s Primary pupils being treated to a sneak peek this week.
The general public will only be able to view the store by appointment, but bookings are being taken for free public tours from January onwards via www.renfrewshireleisure.com/ thesecretcollection