Image: River & Rowing Museum in 2005 (CC BY-SA 2.5 Rowland Shaw)
£1m annual losses and building maintenance costs cited as key factor in closure decision affecting 35,000-item collection
The River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames is to permanently close, it has been announced.
The Foundation of the River & Rowing Museum said the museum, opened in 1998, will close its doors to the public on 21st September.
It said almost all of the team will leave shortly after that date. Existing bookings for school visits and event space in September will be honoured. Patrons and Annual Pass holders will be contacted.
An announcement said “[t]he focus of the few remaining team members will be to find new homes for the Museum’s extensive collections, following heritage sector best practice.”
Its four core collections – Henley, River, Rowing and John Piper – amount to over 35,000 physical items.
The Henley collection alone consists of some 6,000 items – around 15% of the total. Its largest collection is the international rowing collection, with over 13,000 items.
The museum recognised its recent financial struggle, which it said saw recent net losses averaging £1m a year.
It described an “endowment depleted by essential building works and significant increases in the cost of operation”.
The foundation trustees said they had taken the “extremely difficult” decision to close while there are “still sufficient funds to undertake this in an orderly manner”.
Trustees said a factor behind the closure was “the scale of the building and the subsequent cost to maintain it, which is way beyond that of a specialist museum in a small market town.”
It said a new use for the building “needs to be found urgently”, and a smaller museum could occupy some of the space, if much smaller.
Its river education programme is also hoped to continue to be delivered via outreach in schools and alternative venues. The museum has reached 4000 school children annually, including 350 with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Chair of Trustees David Worthington said “ultimately the venture was just too ambitious – six galleries, multiple public spaces, two classrooms, a 5,000 square foot storage facility and a 35,000+ object collection. It was just too much.”
“I want to give thanks and pay tribute to the thousands of hours of commitment, heavy-lifting and simple belief that have come from the leadership, employees and the volunteers, from patrons, members, sponsors, trustees and more.
“Everyone has tried to make it work – and on one level we have – it has been a great museum, lauded when opened, enjoyed by well over two million people, remembered by second and third generations and over one hundred thousand school children.
“But in the end, however exciting it might have been, whatever changes might have been made, the financial challenge was simply too great.”
Its final weekend of 20th and 21st September will include free admission as part of Heritage Open Days.
