Wiltshire 25
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Wiltshire

Devizes Museum

The one thing that the Wilts Arch could do to centralise Wiltshire collections and make them accessible (add the argument here 'how much is Stonehenge worth?') is to relocate to the place where the visitors already go and attempt to democratise the visitor experience.
Yes, I see your point, but isn't that sort of democratising catering to the casual visitor? How many of those visitors go back to Stonehenge on a regular basis? Wot about us lot, and the more serious researcher? Do we really want to go all the way to Stonehenge every time we want to check something out, creating more traffic and more visitors at an already congested site? You can get to Devizes from most parts of Wiltshire a heck of a lot easier than you can get to Stonehenge; you can park easily there, take a stroll down to the Museum and spend a quiet couple of hours there without hoards of other people milling about.

There's a bit of a similarity here with Sutton Hoo and the British Museum; the majority of artefacts discovered at Sutton Hoo are in the BM, while Sutton Hoo has the barrow itself, of course, and an excellent visitor centre with replicas and reconstructions (and a few of the original artefacts). Pity the replicas aren't in the British Museum and the originals at Sutton Hoo ;-)

You are quite right of course, but museums only survive if they have numbers coming through the doors.

The biggest museum visitor numbers in Wiltshire are to the two museums that feature in films - Harry Potter sent Lacock Fox Talbot figures soaring just as Pride & Prejudice on BBC did a few years before. Castle Combe being in Dr Dolittle being the other big hit. These figures are far above those for the AK in Avebury which is the next biggest. Devizes is a lot lower and it being named as one of the top 30 museums in the UK doesn't make it visited enough to qualify for dosh.

I don't know if I would like to see the library dissappear off to Stonehnge, but the building is bursting at the seams. The library work Pete mentioned was to both waterproof the walls and ceiling but also to convert part of the lecture area and joint gallery as they just have so many problems functioning. If the collection was moved it would democratise and contextualise what is shown at Stonehenge and leave enough room to get other stuff sorted in Devizes. Plus the money earned at Stonehenge would pay for the biui;lding at Vizes.

Just a thought,

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