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Three city museums saved from closure
Three Bristol museums threatened with closure in 2024 are set to be saved after Bristol City Council chiefs found ways to make more money from them.
The plans in the authority’s annual draft budget mean that the Red Lodge Museum on Park Row, the Georgian House Museum on George Street and Blaise Museum within the Blaise Castle Estate would keep their doors open.
And the council says its ideas to raise the combined £142,000 extra income required would not mean having to introduce entrance charges as previously suggested, although the proposals are in an early stage and would depend on government finance settlements being finalised later in 2025.
is needed now More than ever
Blaise Museum within the Blaise Castle estate explores how people lived through time
When councillors agreed the 2025/26 budget in February, it included a 12-month “stay of execution” for the three small museums that were earmarked to be mothballed.
Conservatives accused the Green-led authority of “ripping the heart out of our local history” during a full council debate on the issue in March 2024.
More than 3,500 people have signed a petition to save the three city museums. Each of them is much smaller and attracts far fewer visitors than Bristol Museum & Art Gallery and M Shed.
But in January, performing arts trade union Equity warned the plans to shut the museums, along with other cuts, would leave the city as a “cultural desert”.
The Georgian House on Great George Street shows what a sugar plantation and slave owner’s home might have looked like in around 1790
Defending the proposals at the time, Bristol City Council leader councillor Tony Dyer said the Red Lodge, the Georgian House and Blaise Museum were open only two-thirds of the year and then for just four days a week.
He said Blaise Museum had 18,000 visitors a year and both the Georgian House and the Red Lodge between 8,000 and 9,000, compared with 700,000 for M Shed and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
The council’s draft 2026/27 budget consultation said: “The options being considered for the future of the Red Lodge, the Georgian House and Blaise Museums were deferred in February 2025, giving the council 12 months to plan and find a source of funding to avoid closure.
“The current proposal has identified ways to offset the £142,000 to keep the three museums open by growing income, through a combination of measures including increasing commercial use, retail and improving the general offer across the museums.
“The savings are expected to be made over a three-year period.”
Details of the money-spinning ideas are yet to be published, but the council has confirmed that, as it stands, none involve charging visitors to go in.
Adam Postans is a local democracy reporter for Bristol
All photos: Martin Booth
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