Radstock Museum’s Trustees and volunteers are delighted that the museum has been awarded a grant of £1,000 by Westfield Parish Council towards its new research room and reference library.

Geoff Fuller, Chair of Westfield Parish Council and Westfield Councillor, Eleanor Jackson, presented Simon Carter, a Trustee of Radstock Musuem and head of the

museum’s documentation and archiving team, with the cheque in the soon to be

completed room.

The grant will go towards a new computer on which the museum’s archives can be viewed, additional shelving, window blinds, and museum grade archiving materials.

The room will be a new community asset, providing museum visitors with open-access to electronically stored local, historical photographs, along with books and folders on the history of the local area.

The museum would like to thank its volunteers, who have worked hard to store over 15,000 images; prepare 200 topic based research folders and put together a

library of over 1,000 books.

When the museum re-opens in 2017, after its Christmas shutdown, all visitors, a good number of whom are residents of Westfield, will benefit from this generous grant as they will be able to access, via the computers, archives of local historical documents and photographs which, until now, have been largely unseen. Anyone interested in what the Somerset Coalfield area was like in the past will benefit from this new facility. In addition, subject to a small charge, they will be able to print copies of items for their personal use.

The research room project is an element of the Museum’s Forward Plan

approved by the Arts Council for England, which has already paid £500 from its South West Museum Development Programme: Small Grant, Big Improvement,

towards new desks, chairs, and folders. A further grant for a second new computer has been given by the Friends of Radstock Museum, plus a grant in 2014 from Midsomer Norton Town Council, which paid for the library book cases.

For more details, visit: www.radstockmuseum.co.uk where you can subscribe to a regular free email newsletter, see how to join our team of volunteers or give a donation to help to keep this wonderful museum open for future generations.

Lucy Tudor