I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, being neither a member of WWIG or having asked for a statement from Doug Darroch Jnr but… The museum was a privately owned concern for a long time, with WWIG using/renting space for their museum. The fort was not in the best repair and flooded several times, not helping the exhibits. For a long time the museum was not open to the public. More recently the owner put the whole fort up for sale and Doug Darroch Snr mortgaged his house and raised the money to buy it. After his father’s recent death Doug Jnr is getting the museum back up to standard. The fort is also home to a merseybeat and elvis museum, as well as being licensed for weddings and functions. These make the money which will keep it open. All but one of the founding members are now dead and one of the later (late) members appears to ‘dispersed’ parts of the collection for private gain. Too late to ask questions now. They are in the unusual situation of having nothing from digs they carried out themselves, for instance the P61 at Nantwitch and a Mustang 1 at Whitchurch. They have also lent out items for display which have been lost or stolen. In all a fairly depressing situation.
The Spitfire dig gave the opportunity to recover a local aircraft to display in its entirety in a local museum. The dig was partly funded by the Birkenhead council, attended by county archaeologists and the head of parks amongst other notables. When spectators at the wire asked what was going to happen to the bits they could be truthfully told they would soon be able to see them at a museum within walking distance of the site. We can’t do anything about the past (except moan rightously) but this dig was something of a model for the future.
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