Move for museum?

Town centre: Larger site hope for Maidenhead Heritage Centre

Discussions between the Royal Borough and Maidenhead Heritage Centre to move the venue to a larger site in Maidenhead are at a ‘very early stage’, a meeting has heard.

Centre chairman Richard Poad was speaking at a communities overview and scrutiny panel on Tuesday, where he provided an update on the museum’s plans.

The heritage centre has been based in Park Street since 2006 – its seventh home since it was founded in 1993.

Mr Poad told councillors that the museum has survived through the pandemic thanks to various grants and the success of its online lecture programme.

During the current financial

year, he said it is ‘taking time to rebuild audiences’ after museums were only allowed to reopen from May.

“This is partly due to the reduction in tourism and the absence of foreign visitors,” he said. “We historically get a steady stream of visitors from Europe and North America and they have been absent.

“We are worried that another lockdown may happen this winter, so we are trying to conserve our energy a little bit.”

Talk soon turned to Maidenhead Heritage

Centre’s future amid the planned regeneration in and around Park Street.

The chairman said that talks between the venue and the council are beginning over whether the museum can be moved to the former SportsAble building in Braywick Road.

“Discussions are at a very early stage but we are sure that with good will on both sides, a satisfactory agreement can be reached,” Mr Poad said.

He added that if the heritage centre was able to obtain a larger venue, it could display more artefacts and host larger groups of people to help its finances.

“More space would enable us to engage more with the local community. We can also run school sessions without having to shut to other visitors,” he said.

Mr Poad added that he hoped a decision could be made on the heritage centre’s next move ‘quite rapidly’, but said that it would take several months to move over supplies.

Councillor Greg Jones (Con, Riverside) asked whether a move to the out-of-town Braywick Road would make it harder for visitors to ‘stumble upon’ the museum.

“You are going to really have to make a decision to go there,” he said.

Mr Poad replied by saying that a ‘small proportion’ of people are ‘unplanned drop-in’ customers, with the museum wanting to increase its ‘planned visitors’.

“That is where the space is really important – we can start accepting groups that we have turned away,” he said.