Just spotted this on the BBC, and I thought they had closed it and told no one!http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-42456778
The Science Museum has submitted plans to build a new store for 340,000 of its objects near Swindon.
The 545-acre former airfield in Wroughton currently stores the museum’s large objects, when they are not needed for display, in 10 hangars.
But due to the cramped conditions and “failing 1940s infrastructure” the stores are not open to the public.
The London museum said the new building would house 80% of its collection and be regularly open to the public.
The Wiltshire site was taken over by the Science Museum in the late 1970s.
Wroughton Science Museum
The museum hopes the “ambitious” new 289m (948ft) long building will house about 340,000 objects
Along with the airliner used for a Rolling Stones tour, the site also holds the first hovercraft, MRI scanners and deactivated nuclear missiles.
A spokesman for the museum, said: “The new facility will enable us to improve and speed up the process of preparing objects for loan to other organisations, or for display in new galleries and exhibitions across our family of museums.”
Matt Moore, head of site, said: “It’s fantastic to think that we are really close to transforming the site and how we manage, and access, our collection.”
Plans for the new facility, which is the size of two football pitches, have been submitted to Swindon Borough Council.
By: SADSACK - 29th December 2017 at 20:08
The plans are for an exhibit store. Plans for the planes are not clear
By: warhawk69 - 27th December 2017 at 18:52
The hangers suffer from concrete cancer that is a major issue I’m led to believe.
By: HP111 - 27th December 2017 at 10:14
I haven’t been there for some years, but the last iimpression I had was that it was the hangars with curved concrete roofs that were suffering from some small chunks of crumbling concrete sometimes falling from the ceilings while the larger hangars simply needed maintenance to fix water leaking. Perhaps the museum is angling to get new non-airfield, non-aviation style buildings.
By: Wallace - 27th December 2017 at 06:47
Funny, when you think of those aircraft being stored in surgical conditions while every other aircraft that’s been preserved just gets by with ordinary air around them.
As for “failing 1940s infrastructure” strange how the RAF are still using those hangars after all those years although the word MAINTENANCE may be missing somewhere. Besides they are in the preservation business right?
Sorry guys, the Science Museum seems to think they are something special while I don’t.
I visited their collection in the late 70s, some place and interesting collection then and would like to go back sometime but I’m not holding my breath for that new building opening.
By: Moggy C - 26th December 2017 at 11:37
Thx
Moggy
By: Null Orifice - 26th December 2017 at 11:34
Confirmed.
We are surrounded by the d@mned things – green, but ugly!
By: Moggy C - 26th December 2017 at 11:01
I think some of the site is already sold/rented,
I believe everything south of the easty-westy runway is a solar farm today. (Confirmation or rebuttal welcomed)
Moggy
By: Shorty01 - 26th December 2017 at 00:12
I last went to Wroughton in 2004. The hangars that were open, whilst containing a decent amount of artifacts didn’t seem “cramped”, likewise the hangars themselves looked in decent shape. Has it deteriorated that much in 13 year or had significantly more items added ?
As a museum would it not be good to preserve the existing “failing 1940s infrastructure” or are we looking at an excuse to flog off some real estate for houses to make a bit of cash? It was nice to see the airfield as I imagine it would have looked in it’s early years.
Anyway, for reference here is a Youtube I did with photos of that visit showing how exhibits were arranged and how the hangar structure looked inside, which seemed pretty good to me.
By: Sabrejet - 24th December 2017 at 09:52
I think some of the site is already sold/rented, so that seems likely. But on the positive side, this is a cracking development. I was fortunate to attend a good few air displays, fly-ins and open days at Wroughton and it’s a lovely location.
And if they can retain the runway it provides a great way of delivering by air, as they have done previously.
By: paul1867 - 24th December 2017 at 09:34
This is indeed excellent news and certainly one to put back on my bucket list. The airfield site has wonderful potential for “live” exhibits and I just hope that this development is not going to be funded by selling some of the site off.
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December 23, 2017 at 9:57 pm