Museum on course for 2027 reopening after restoration

The first top-to-toe revamp of a town's museum has reached an "exciting milestone" almost four years after it closed.

The full interior of Ipswich Museum is undergoing an £11.8m restoration, to highlight the building's Victorian past as one of the first public museums in the country.

It closed in October 2022 and had been initially due to reopen in 2025 - but will now open in 2027.

The museum's manager, Alison Hall, who gave BBC Suffolk's Wayne Bavin a sneak preview of the work on Wednesday, said: "As much as we had done surveys to check the state of the building before the work started, there were a few surprises along the way which means things have taken a bit longer than we had hoped."

"But you've got to do it properly. This is a once in a lifetime project," she added.

Frank Hargrave, Colchester and Ipswich Museums manager, said restoration on the infrastructure of the building had now largely been finished and the museum would reopen in early 2027.

Original Victorian tiling that had been carpeted over was now exposed - and a new roof, stairway, lift, café and improvements to the shop and toilet facilities are in place.

Hargrave said the restoration was now a matter of returning objects to their rightful places, which he said was "the fun bit" because it was an opportunity to re-explore some "fabulous artefacts".

"I think [visitors] will be as overwhelmed as we are by the quality of the works – the whole experience has just been massively enhanced," he said.

"There are not many places in the country where you can go into and see something that hasn't really changed for 100 years."

Ipswich Museum first opened in Museum Street in 1847, moving to the High Street in 1881.

The gorillas arrived in 1884 and Rosie the rhino came to Ipswich in 1907. The giraffe has been at the museum since 1909 and the woolly mammoth, Wool.I.Am, was built in 1992.

Hall added: "We've got galleries to refit and objects to put back in, but when visitors do come, they will notice all our spaces are refreshed, have been well looked after and given a lot of love.

"This is for the people of Ipswich and Suffolk to come and explore their own heritage."

The final phase will cost an extra £500,000, which the council will be asked to cover during a forthcoming executive meeting, taking the project's price tag to £12.3m.

It is hoped about £250,000 of that amount can be covered by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which has already contributed £5.6m.

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