The difficulties of redeveloping much-loved local authority museums

Ipswich Museum has been at the heart of the cultural offer of this Suffolk county town for more than a century after first opening to the public in 1881. I grew up in the area in the 1980s-90s, a time when you were greeted by the Anglo-Saxon queen Boudicca in her chariot with rearing horses in front of you as you walked into the museum’s double-height Victorian atrium. That image is forever etched into the minds of many local residents.

Could Ipswich Museum ever get better than that, we wondered? Of course it could.

What took its place was something closer to the original Victorian welcome to the museum – enormous taxidermy animals in huge, polished display cases. From lions to apes and even a giraffe, this grand entrance to the museum remained for some years and was much loved by local crowds, just as Boudicca was in her day.

(Boudicca, by the way, was dismantled years ago and relegated to being a normal Anglo-Saxon in a smaller gallery where she somehow caught fleas and had to be binned. A sad end for a once tribal queen.)

The taxidermied big game stood proudly next to the museum’s new kids’ favourite, humorously named Wool-I-Am, a model of a woolly mammoth. But the rest of the museum was suffering.

After that main entrance, visitors walked into a badly thought-out space covering the world wars, with an adjacent room holding the Designated status geology collections – 40,000 specimens with critical material not found anywhere else in the UK – displayed in their beautiful original wooden display cabinets but with no meaningful interpretation.

There was an Anglo-Saxon hoard to see in another small room before entering a different gallery set up as an Anglo-Saxon living scene with mannequins, before advancing to what seemed to be a back room with all sorts of amazing collection objects, including a 17^th-century English witch ducking stool, but again with minimal interpretation or cohesive visitor journey.

The museum really did need some TLC, and in 2021 it was promised more than £4m from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a revamp.

Colchester and Ipswich Museums Service, which runs the museum, did all the right things from the start, including extensive audience research, work on improving accessibility, creating a more representative workforce, and diversifying the programme. All very thorough. However, inevitably, some CGI drawings of the interior of the “new” museum leaked out and spooked the locals, including me.

What was once a deep-coloured cast iron-pillared atrium with statuesque taxidermy and a model woolly mammoth, was to be painted standard Brilliant White.

While I’ve always had faith in Colchester and Ipswich Museums Service, I’ve been a bit nervous about what the redevelopment might actually bring. It’s difficult having so much nostalgia caught up in the project, while also being completely aware that the museum needed a big rethink and overhaul.

So, in what I can only call a daring leap of faith, I asked for a little behind-the-scenes tour of the still-in-development Ipswich Museum, since I was in the area. The head of service, Frank Hargrave, and manager of Ipswich Museum, Alison Hall, kindly took me around.

It turned out that I had absolutely no need to worry.

Restoration and construction work has been completed and the spaces are transformed. The Victorian atrium has been gently tickled into even more former glory and the monumental and much-loved taxidermy displays will remain. Wool-I-Am is also staying, I’m told.

Hall shared with me that, to allay any worries that local museum lovers had and have about what the redevelopment will bring, the museum hosted concerts in the main atrium space to reassure its devoted audiences. They were sold out, and attendees were reportedly delighted that the museum was going to restore, conserve and spruce up the treasured displays while rethinking the rest of the museum.

So, the adjacent ground floor spaces will contain a generously sized cafe (the museum never had a cafe before), as well as a space that will take visitors back in time to the age of the dinosaurs. The rest of the museum will tell the story of the town and its people through objects that have been interpreted with help from local communities.

The museum seems at least twice the size it was, with spaces having been joined or opened up, lovely smooth ramps, stairs and lifts put in, walls painted muted colours, and there are also more original features exposed – including original Victorian gas lights, a rare find, plus wonderful steel girder ceilings that really evoke the engineering prowess of the Industrial Revolution.

The team has been working with communities across Ipswich and the surrounding area throughout the redevelopment to decolonise the collections and interpretation. It’s been a very inclusive project from the get-go.

And with exhibition design by Mather and Co, soon to be installed, I’ve no doubt the museum will look incredible.

Another much-loved feature of the museum is the important Listed – for its size and being built into the fabric of the museum – gannet diorama. And I was very pleased to hear that this will remain completely intact too, in situ, with dusted gannets, cleaned rocks and beautiful freshly polished glistening bird poo. What a truly wonderful sight to behold.

My confidence has been restored and I can’t wait to walk through the museum for the first time when it reopens in spring next year.