EVESHAM’s historic Almonry Museum is in need of urgent roof repairs to make sure the 14th century building’s artefacts and historical items are not put at risk of water damage.
Roof tiles have slipped and some are missing from the roof of the heart of the Grade I listed building and work needs to be carried out to limit the loss of more tiles and possible damage to the roof.
Councillors on Evesham Town Council’s Planning Committee agreed at their meeting on Monday to request the council authorise the money needed to carry out the repair works.
Speaking at the meeting, Almonry manager Ashleigh Jayes said the missing roof tiles were over the archaeology and civic rooms, but confirmed none of the costumes and artefacts were currently at risk.
Repairs to the roof is just one of a number of issues facing the museum. As the Observer reported last year, Historic England has placed the 14th century building on the ‘at risk’ register after fears were raised about the building’s structural instability.
Other issues which have besieged the town centre museum includes the stone slate roof coming to the end of its life and structural instability problems with the timber frame as a result of weaknesses and rot.
Museum bosses have launched a bid for a Heritage Lottery Fund grant to support repairs to the Grade I listed building and to help rejuvenate the museum’s exhibits.
Ms Jayes said: “As a lot of you are aware we do need some remedial roof repairs at the Almonry, particularly as we seem to be having this quite wet weather at the moment.
“I asked local surveyor John Goom to come in and have a look to give us some ideas about what needed doing and he basically said in light of the ambition to go for a HLF bid we could just do some patch repairing at the moment.
“He doesn’t think that anything is too drastic at the moment. What it appears to be is that where the roof tiles have slipped it’s because the tiles are held with wooden pegs and basically the pegs have come loose, shrunk or fallen out and that’s why the roof tiles have slipped off.
“We don’t have any intrusive water fortunately, it’s just the tiles we want to put back because we don’t want to leave it open to the elements and put things at risk.”
