Campaigners lose battle to save fire brigade museum from move to new facility

A HISTORIC museum has shut its doors for the final time despite a hard-fought campaign to save it.

Vintage fire engines and other artefacts dating back almost 200 years at Edinburgh’s Museum of Fire will be packed in boxes and put in storage near Falkirk.

Lauriston Place, formerly the Central Fire Station, has housed the museum since 1988. But it is now to be moved to McDonald Road fire station, where a new facility is being built to house the exhibits.

The museum celebrates the story of James Braidwood, who founded the world’s first municipal fire brigade Edinburgh in 1824.

But the Lauriston Place building, the last remaining example of a Victorian fire station in the UK, has been sold to Edinburgh University in in a cost-cutting drive and is due to become part of the College of Art.

Campaigners tried to halt the closure, lobbying ministers and collecting 5,000 names on a petition. They also appealed to the First Minister to intervene.

Lothian Tory MSP Gordon Lindhurst also won crossparty support for a motion in Parliament.

But this week, the volun- teers who run the museum were told it would close yesterday, with the exhibits to be packed up by the end of November. The property will be handed over to the university on Friday, December 16.