Maryport’s Senhouse Roman Museum is going on the road thanks to £66,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Reimagining Roman Maryport focuses on exploring the Roman heritage of Maryport and West Cumbria as represented in the collections the museum cares for.
People of Maryport and the West Cumbrian coast will have the opportunity to learn more about their Roman heritage and have a voice in how their museum can serve its future audiences better.
The project’s Roman Roadshow will take the museum out into community hubs and schools in Maryport, along the Solway Coast and in West Cumbria where it will host creative and playful ways for people to discover the relevance of Roman heritage to them today.
The museum will also carry out consultation with existing and potential audiences, undergo a governance review and business planning process to develop a resilience plan to support the future development of the museum and its services.
This is expected to include the development of a community forum of local people recruited during the project.
The Senhouse Roman Museum cares for and displays an internationally significant collection of Roman artefacts, all recovered from Maryport and West Cumbria.
The stars of the collection are the Roman altars, inscriptions and sculptures discovered by the Senhouse family since the reign of Elizabeth I.
Jane Laskey, museum manager, said: “We are delighted to have received support for this exciting project thanks to the National Lottery players and are looking forward to sharing the museum and its fabulous collections with everyone.”
Pete Wilson, Senhouse Museum Trust chairman, said: “We are privileged to care for a unique and internationally important collection that deserves to be far better known than it is.
“We all owe an immense debt of gratitude to the many generations of the Senhouse family, who curated the collection of altars and other stonework that is unrivalled by that from any other site in the country.”
