Museum Closure: Canterbury's Roman Museum Could be the Latest Victim of the Credit Crunch
Canterbury City Council is the latest local authority set to close museums as part of cost-cutting measures. The council is wielding the budget axe – and it’s decided that saving the city’s Christmas lights is more important than keeping the Roman Museum open to the public.
Under the budget proposals, the Roman Museum and the nearby the Westgate Towers Museum would close, while Herne Bay Museum would remain open only for ‘educational’ groups (though apparently not for the general public who wish to educate themselves).
Canterbury is not alone in sacrificing museums – often seen as soft targets – as part of cost-cutting drives. Leicester, Worthing and Kingston are three others to have looked to cut museum opening hours in an effort to save money. In the case of Kingston and Worthing, residents have resisted the changes.
A National Cost-Cutting Trend
In Kingston, the council reversed plans to slash the museum’s opening hours after a public outcry. In Worthing, plans to cut the Museum and Art Gallery’s opening hours were met with strong public opposition after more than half of those responding to a public consultation said they would accept a 14.9% rise in council tax if it meant the preservation of cultural and education programmes, which include the museum.
Canterbury’s budget plans fly in the face its own consultation, which saw more than 44% of respondents describe the museum changes as “most unacceptable”. With the Tory-led council seemingly determined to go ahead, public opposition to the plans is mounting. An online petition has been accumulating signatures from the general public, as well as from academics and teachers, while a Facebook group carrying news and updates on the campaign now has more than 1,000 members. Information on who to write to at council is provided on the Save Canterbury’s Museums website.
'Canterbury Should be Exploiting Its Heritage, Not Shutting It'
Dr Paul Bennett of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust is among those fighting the closures. “We should be exploiting Canterbury’s heritage assets more fully at this difficult [economic] time, not considering closure of the best of them for potential re-use as a retail outlet,” he says. “Canterbury is not just a provincial town – its name is known all over the world for its heritage and it is therefore irrational, even in difficult times, to chip away at what is the main basis upon which visitors come to the city in the numbers they do."
Canterbury is a UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site, and the Roman Museum and Westgate Towers both sit within the popular tourist precinct that includes the world-famous Cathedral, St Martin’s Church and St Augustine’s Abbey. Bennett argues that cultural and historical sites that could further exploit Canterbury's tourist potential should be encouraged, not shut down altogether. “It is the very combination of museums in different locations that with greater engagement ought to provide added value to the Canterbury experience,” he says.
The Roman Museum – underground at the level of the old Roman town – offers a fascinating window on life in a Roman town house, complete with an in situ Roman mosaic that was discovered following wartime bombing. The interactive nature of the museum means visitors can see reconstructions that illustrate what the house was like in Roman times, and there are also touch screen computer games and a ‘touch the past’ area where visitors can handle real Roman artefacts.
A final decision will be made at a full meeting of council on February 18.
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There will be a mass protest outside the Roman Museum at noon this Saturday, February 13. Anyone opposed to this museum closure is urged to take part. Organisers are hoping those in the academic and heritage worlds will unite to spread the world and fight the closure.
"We are calling for everyone who opposes the proposed cut to join us in a brief show of solidarity," says John Hammond, Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Kent and a non-executive director of Canterbury Archaeological Trust. "Access to the museum is very narrow and it only needs a couple of hundred people to jam this up totally. We don’t intend the disruption to last long – just enough to demonstrate to the council that people are prepared to stand up and be counted.
"The Roman Museum is unique. It is the only place where such a large in situ example of Roman archaeology can be viewed in Canterbury, along with numerous finds, which in many cases are national treasures. The importance of this museum to Canterbury cannot be overstated. On economic grounds alone it is a considerable tourist attraction. It was originally designed in the 1990s primarily as a venue for teaching school children about our Roman heritage and 19,000 of them – many French – visited it last year; many thousands of adult day-trippers also visited it, though council won’t release exact figures.
"The Roman Museum is very poorly marketed – with no signage pointing to its location – yet in a six-month period at the end of last year took £60,000 across the turnstiles."
There is a meeting between the University of Kent and the council scheduled for today, and another taking place between the other Canterbury university, Christ Church, in the next few days. The academic world is united in its oppposition to this closure.
I wonder if the local schools are organising anything. One would think that the teachers would be quite enraged also, as it is a perfect nearby fieldtrip location? ;)
Another piece of British heritage bites the dust, thanks to the crumbling economy.
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