A museum dedicated to the Thames Tunnel — the first tunnel to be built beneath a navigable river — will be renovated and refreshed, thanks to a heritage grant.
The Brunel Museum in Rotherhithe — named for the father-son engineers who oversaw the tunnel's construction — has announced that it's received £1.85 million in Lottery funding. The money will be used for a number of upgrades, including:
- Restoring the existing Engine House building back to its former glory
- Building a new 'welcome pavilion' with a café, shop and accessible facilities
- Creating a programme of free community events
- Displaying a collection of 30 watercolours known as the Thames Tunnel Archive for the first time
This 'Brunel Museum Reinvented' project will take place over the next three years, with everything hopefully completed by 2025, in time for the 200th anniversary of construction commencing on the Thames Tunnel.
In other museum news, Forest Hill's Horniman Museum has just been awarded Art Fund's Museum of the Year, and praised for 'weaving their values into everything they do, breathing life into their collections with new relevance for diverse communities, and setting the agenda for how a traditional museum can reinvent itself through powerful ideas'. The prize includes a £100k grant.
