The move of the collections is now complete. Starting many months ago, teams of volunteers, some working by day and others by night, equipped with a small lorry, rope, sandwiches etc and using a lot of ingenuity cleared St Georges Church, our home for 40 years, and transported the collection to its new home.
Things that didn’t fit in the lorry were pushed down the road, much to the amusement of the pedestrians and
drivers alike. Amazingly, none of the instruments were lost or damaged during the move, which is more than can be said of the volunteers.
Everything is now housed in the new building, although much of it is currently held in storage areas awaiting rebuilding or restoration. We have for some time been busy .....
Re-assembling the instruments
A number of the larger instruments have now been re-assembled and are being brought back into playing condition. However, a major effort is also ongoing to rebuild and refurbish the Aeolian and Wurlitzer pipe organs. In Galleries 1 and 2 on the ground floor all the main instruments are in place and considerable effort has been expended to get them into working order as quickly as possible. The smaller
instruments for these galleries, e.g. musical boxes, have been unpacked, inspected and placed in a secure store until required.
A program of tuning, cleaning and polishing the instruments is now underway, mainly by our volunteers, as we prepare the museum to receive visitors.
The Roll Library
The Museum’s collections of music rolls (approx 30,000) have now been moved from our ground floor storage area to the second floor. The library, with its air controlled environment, is being fitted out with purpose built shelving to house the rolls. This work is almost complete.
Building the gallery displays
A huge amount of work is going into the preparation of the museum - both visible and behind the scenes. For example, instrument labels for the presentation of our exhibits in Galleries 1 and 2 are being prepared; display, lighting and barrier systems for all public areas have been procured in consultation with design consultants.
Visitors to the museum are currently greeted by a hive of activity and noise in the entrance hall which doubles as our workshop (for now). Here, volunteers are manufacturing a ‘street gallery’ complete with shop windows, barrel organs etc. which has been designed by the Museum’s architect.
Planned Opening
Much has been achieved and there is still a lot more work to do. But, rather than wait until everything is complete, the Museum has decided that the two main ground floor galleries will be open to pre-booked coach parties from mid-March 2007.
News & Press Releases...March 2007
