Plea for new blood to secure museum

The original design for the Tingwall Agricultural Museum, which was subsequently mothballed due to a lack of funding. The later project is less ambitious, but could still showcase Shetland's rich agricultural heritage. However, new members are needed if plans are to get off the ground. Image: Redman and Sutherland

A plea has been made for new blood as crunch efforts continue to develop Tingwall Agricultural Museum.

An annual general meeting is planned for next week as continuing plans are made to highlight a wide collection of farming and crofting artefacts.

And the chairman of the committee, Harry Irvine, says new members are badly needed if the long-running proposals – which first went public in 2010 – are to get off the ground.

“We’d welcome new members because at the moment the committee is quite old. Some in the committee are now 70 years old, so we would need new members, because some of the existing ones would like to step down now.”

Mr Irvine fears much of Shetland’s rich agricultural heritage could be lost forever if the new museum is not built, or developed as part of an existing build.

“There are people who have various items around Shetland that would be willing to give them to this museum,” he added.

“If we were to say, ‘oh no, this whole thing is not going ahead’, quite a lot of very good items might be dumped.”

The committee’s annual general meeting will be held on Monday, where members hope a way forward for the project can be found.

Ambitious plans for an agricultural museum first emerged way back in 2010, when proposals for a £1.3 million development near Walster in Tingwall first emerged.

The plans grew out of a desire to show off a collection owned by the late Jean Sandison, which filled a previous agricultural museum many years ago.

• Read our Landwise supplement in this week’s Shetland Times for more on this story.