Dear All
You may have seen that, in an all-too-familiar act of barbarism, Cambridgeshire County Council (minority Tory 'leadership', 11 UKIP councillors!) intends to withdraw its funding of the Cromwell Museum at Huntingdon from 2015. The 'savings' made will be pitiful (some £20,000 a year), but the proposal comes with all the usual sick-making cant about prioritising resources to 'protect the vulnerable'.
(This sad news will have a paticular resonance for all those who were involved with Church Farmhouse Museum. Church Farm had a very happy relationship with the Cromwell Museum. We displayed two of its excellent travelling exhibitions- on the Regicides and on Cromwell's re-admission of the Jews to England- and, when Church Farm shut, we gave our stock of The Rota facsimile 17th Century pamphlets to Huntingdon.)
The Cromwell Museum is the only museum dedicated to one of the most significant figures in British history, and is of national- indeed, international importance. Its building, the oldest in the town, and once Cromwell's grammar school, is Grade II* listed, and so unlikely to fit any other purpose, and its collection, much of it on loan, once dispersed would be unlikely ever to be re-assembled. There are no alternative sources of funding in prospect. Protest has already started in earnest (a letter in Tuesday's Times signed by more than thirty distinguished 17th Century historians attacked the proposed closure in no uncertain terms), but, as always, the 'consultation' period is pitifully short: a petition against this miserable plan must close on 4 February.
Please click on the link below, take a moment to sign the petition (and forward the link to anyone you think might be concerned), and show the cheese-paring clowns of Cambridgeshire CC that, even if they do not think that history matters, a lot of us do.
http://savethecromwellmuseum.org/
regards
Gerrard
You may have seen that, in an all-too-familiar act of barbarism, Cambridgeshire County Council (minority Tory 'leadership', 11 UKIP councillors!) intends to withdraw its funding of the Cromwell Museum at Huntingdon from 2015. The 'savings' made will be pitiful (some £20,000 a year), but the proposal comes with all the usual sick-making cant about prioritising resources to 'protect the vulnerable'.
(This sad news will have a paticular resonance for all those who were involved with Church Farmhouse Museum. Church Farm had a very happy relationship with the Cromwell Museum. We displayed two of its excellent travelling exhibitions- on the Regicides and on Cromwell's re-admission of the Jews to England- and, when Church Farm shut, we gave our stock of The Rota facsimile 17th Century pamphlets to Huntingdon.)
The Cromwell Museum is the only museum dedicated to one of the most significant figures in British history, and is of national- indeed, international importance. Its building, the oldest in the town, and once Cromwell's grammar school, is Grade II* listed, and so unlikely to fit any other purpose, and its collection, much of it on loan, once dispersed would be unlikely ever to be re-assembled. There are no alternative sources of funding in prospect. Protest has already started in earnest (a letter in Tuesday's Times signed by more than thirty distinguished 17th Century historians attacked the proposed closure in no uncertain terms), but, as always, the 'consultation' period is pitifully short: a petition against this miserable plan must close on 4 February.
Please click on the link below, take a moment to sign the petition (and forward the link to anyone you think might be concerned), and show the cheese-paring clowns of Cambridgeshire CC that, even if they do not think that history matters, a lot of us do.
http://savethecromwellmuseum.org/
regards
Gerrard
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