BRENTFORD'S Musical Museum was granted a heritage lottery windfall of £1.8m this week to help fund its move to purpose built premises further along the High Street.

The donation represents a major step forward for the museum, which hopes to secure a further £0.7m to finalise its move to the site currently occupied by Barratt's Capital West show flat - a site with three times the current floor area of St George's Church, the museum's present location.

Assuming the museum satisfies the criteria for the second stage, which will take into account the design of the new three-storey building, the grants will go towards fitting out the interior, developing new galleries and the huge task of moving and re-erecting over 300 instruments, 30,000 paper music rolls, four pipe organs and all the museum's other archive material.

In addition, the Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded the Museum a Development Grant for specialist consultancy work on the interior design of the galleries, marketing strategies and educational developments.

The building itself will be constructed by Barratt's, developer of the adjacent high-rise luxury flats, in an s106 agreement with Hounslow Council, and leased to the museum.

Chairman of the Musical Museum, Michael Ryder, told the Times: We could not be more delighted at the news that we have overcome the first hurdle.

It is very cheering news for our dedicated band of volunteers who work really hard keeping the Museum going in the difficult conditions of the old church.

We are taking the opportunity to digitally record all our instruments and carry out a complete audit of the collection.

Although the doors are closed, there is a lot of activity going on within the building in preparation for the move. There was quite a cheer when the volunteers heard the news.

Stage two of our application will require a lot of detailed planning, including costing, in fine detail, every aspect of the move and fitting out. The timing of the move, the complexity and the logistics of it all will have to be very carefully worked out, so no time to take it easy!

It will be more hard work but I feel sure we will be able to meet all the conditions to get through Stage 2 so the new Museum becomes a major facility for the community.

"Much of the work of dismantling the instruments and then re-assembling them will be undertaken by volunteers as only they now know how these fine old instruments come apart.

There are thousands of delicate organ pipes to be moved, a huge number of electrical joints to be unsoldered and large caseworks to be taken apart and then put back together again, with hopefully not too many bits left over!'' added Mr Ryder.

The Musical Museum is closed until it re-opens in its new building towards the end of 2004. Details of the progress of the move can be followed on the web site www.musicalmuseum.co.uk.

January 31, 2003 11:32