Fashion museum gets £768k towards reopening

The city's former post office is being tipped as the new location of the Bath Fashion Museum

A former fashion museum has been given £768,000 in National Lottery funding to help it reopen in 2030.

The Bath Fashion Museum closed in 2022 when the National Trust took back the Assembly Rooms, where it had been for nearly 60 years.

Its collection - which has since been stored in a glove factory in Wiltshire - contains 100,000 items spanning 400 years, from 1600 to the present day.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund has given the money in order to push plans forward to reopen the museum in the former post office, in New Bond Street.

Bringing the collection back to a new museum in the centre of Bath is a major part of Bath and North East Somerset Council's plans to regenerate the Milson Quarter and boost the city's tourism economy, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

'Outstanding collection'

The council failed in its Levelling Up Fund bid to reopen the museum in the post office in 2023.

The museum will apply for a full National Lottery grant of £7.2m next year.

Storing the museum's collection in Wiltshire, at one of only places with the correct conditions to store the fragile collection, has cost the council £150,000 a year.

Cabinet member for economic and cultural sustainable development, Paul Roper, said: "This is going to be a new, world class institution in a UNESCO World Heritage City and there is huge excitement that, at long last, we will be able to display our unique and outstanding fashion collection in a location and setting that it fully deserves."

The council plans to create a new "digital catalogue" which will make the collection available to audiences across the world.

Stuart McLeod, of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, said: "Not only does this mean a Grade II listed building will be brought back to life, but also a globally significant collection will be accessible to everyone, both in person and digitally."