Guernsey Museums project protects island heritage

The future of some "irreplaceable objects" has been safeguarded by the latest stage of a £1m archive project, Guernsey's museums director has said.

More than 30,000 items from the small natural history section are being moved to a new archive.

The room has environmental controls and more space than the current store.

Jason Monaghan said: "You can probably hold objects in these conditions more or less indefinitely if you look after them."

Guernsey Museums small natural history section contains more than 30,000 items

He said previously they had used second hand shelving and were not able to make very good use of the space available.

Four annual payments of £250,000, starting in 2011, were agreed by the States for the project.

Alan Howell, senior curator, said the collection included "basically about everything Victorians used to collect from plants, fossil mammoth bones, insects [and] shells".

He said: "It's going to be wonderful to have space to arrange this material properly."