Threatened museum prepares to reopen (From Witney Gazette)

Threatened museum prepares to reopen

MUSEUM staff who have been living under the shadow of closure are busy getting ready for a new season.

Witney's Cogges Manor Farm Museum, saved for another year thanks to full funding from Oxfordshire County Council, will open its gates on Saturday, March 22, for the Easter weekend.

The museum will have new opening times, better deals on season tickets and added attractions.

Stand-in manager Francesca Jones and publicity manager Lorraine Horne, with the help of a skeleton administration staff, have put together the programme through to November.

There will be old favourites like the threshing weekend and shearing and wool demonstrations but also new shows, events and exhibitions, including an August Bank Holiday festival of rural crafts and a music and dance festival.

A new enclosure is also being built for children to have more hands-on time with young farm animals.

There is also a drive to get more older people through the gates. One idea involves traditional craft workshops.

Opening times will now be 10.30am to 5pm on weekdays and 11am to 5pm at weekends.

The county council has set up a project group to look into the future of the museum, which has a yearly deficit of £250,000, including bringing in outside expertise and financial partnerships.

Ms Jones will run the museum until April when manager Clare Powell and assistant manager Victoria Beaumont both return from maternity leave.

She said the last few months had been worrying.

She said: "The public have been wonderful. Without their support over the last few months, I genuinely doubt whether we would still be here.

"We are putting on more shows and are responding to calls to do a bigger programme to push up visitor numbers."

For more details of events, see www.cogges.org

The public can put forward ideas at a meeting called by the Cogges Museum Trust on Wednesday, February 27, at 7pm, in St Mary's Church, Cogges.