SCOTTISH Borders Council is being asked to put plans for a £1.9m revamp of the Trimontium Museum in Melrose back on track.

The council is being urged to commit £123,000 to enhance the ambitious project’s prospects of gaining essential funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

Last autumn, the Trimontium Trust, whose volunteers have run the Ormiston Institute attraction for the past 25 years, was unsuccessful in an initial bid for £1.4m from the HLF to alter and extend the facility.

Councillors will hear tomorrow (Thursday) that one of the reasons the application failed was that for such a large-scale project and one involving a council-administered building, the HLF would have expected a financial contribution from the council.

A report from SBC’s cultural services advisor Ian Brown states that, since that funding rebuff, the trust had been “encouraged by the HLF” to submit a revised bid.

“The trust is looking for SBC to provide support in the region of 10% of the capital cost [of construction] of £1.2m,” states Mr Brown.

“It is proposed the council provides a £60,000 capital contribution from the emergency and unplanned fund and a further £63,000 of benefit ‘in kind’ in the form of officer time…comprising £56,000 of architectural services and £7,000 of clerk of works services.”

He says an urgent decision is required because the trust’s revised lottery application must be submitted early this month (March).

The report reveals the trust is seeking a lesser amount of £1.3m from the HLF this time round and intends raising the balance of the total cost from a range of other funding sources, as well as from private donations.

Councillors, who recently agreed to spend £3.36m towards creating a permanent home for the Great Tapestry of Scotland in Galashiels, will hear that an aspiration of the Melrose project – involving a doubling in size and capacity of the current accommodation – is to increase annual visitor numbers from 3,000 to 12,000.

“This project at the only museum in Scotland dedicated solely to Roman history will deliver a range of benefits, including the creation of a high quality tourism destination to add to the tourism offer of Melrose and the wider area,” states Mr Brown’s report.

Trust chairman Dr John Reid said he appreciated the efforts of the council in assisting with the preparation of the revised lottery bid.

“Artefacts not on display are either in storage or with the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, while the results of a major ten-year excavation at Newstead by students of Bradford University has yet to be seen by the public,” he told Bordeer Telegraph.

“In addition, there has been no refurbishment since the museum opened in 1991 and over those 25 years there have been great advances in display technology.

“We want to embrace modern interpretive methods of display and thus be able to strengthen and supplement a great body of work and artefacts that will have international appeal.

“We also propose to run a community archaeology programme, creating new learning resources for schools and offering a wide range of volunteering opportunities.”

Trimontium (the three hills) was the fort – a mile away from the museum – occupied by the Romans intermittently from 80AD to 211AD. At its height, around 1,500 soldiers were based there along with a smaller civilian population.

How the attraction will be transformed

By extending the Trimontium Museum onto an external drying green to the rear of the Ormiston Institute, the attraction will, for the first time, have its own dedicated entrance from Melrose High Street.

On entering the upgraded facility, visitors will find themselves within a welcoming reception area and retail space.

From here, there will be a series of permanent and temporary exhibitions connected through “transition spaces”, illuminated by natural and artificial light.

The first of these will be a glazed atrium connecting the existing building to the new extension which will contain a large double height space giving views to an open mezzanine level, accessed by stairs and a glazed lift.