Celebrations as Duke opens Arundel’s new museum

The Duke of Norfolk made the short trip from his home across Mill Road at Arundel Castle, to officially open the new £1.5m museum.

And with his ancestral home a central feature of the impressive new exhibitions, he must have felt he was in familiar surroundings, especially in a circular display strikingly similar to the castle’s ancient keep.

After being announced by Arundel town crier Angela Standing, the Duke congratulated the museum society on achieving a new facility which would be used by the community and enjoyed by visitors from all over the world.

He paid special tributes to two museum stalwarts, chairman Pauline Carder and Rosemary Hagedorn, who is now standing down as a trustee, for their dedication to seeing the building project through.

“We all know they really have been behind this project. They have never, ever, let it go. There have been dark moments when they thought it was never going to happen, but they got through it,” the Duke told scores of guests at the opening, which was watched by many others from the road outside, too.

The museum opened to the public on Tuesday (June 25), ending its nomadic experience in recent times.

Originally based in the old cells beneath Arundel town hall, it moved to the former Arundel Borough Council offices in High Street in 1977 and stayed there until Arun District Council took back the lease in 2007.

By then plans for a new museum were already taking shape, but the collection had to go into storage and for a few years the only reminder of the town’s heritage was in a portable cabin set up in the Mill Road car park and known as the History Store.

Later, a few displays were set up in the tourist information centre in Crown Yard and the cabin was given a new role, housing a team of volunteers, the Cabin Crew, who began the painstaking task of preparing items for exhibition in the new museum, and cataloguing many others in the collection.

Pauline thanked all the museum’s volunteers, trustees and supporters, together with the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), which awarded a near-£900,000 grant to the project, the Angmering Park Estate trustees, Arundel Castle trustees, Arun District, Arundel Town and West Sussex County councils for their contributions.

And she praised architect Graham Whitehouse, who returned from his holiday six years ago with the design concept for the museum, and Jonathan Potter, creator of the interior exhibition areas, for their superb work.

For the full story, see this week’s Gazette (Thursday, June 27).