The National Slate Museum is closing its doors today ahead of a redevelopment.
The project will take around 2 years and will cost £21m and will ‘breathe new life’ into the much-loved museum.
The grade 1 buildings will be conserved and renovated, and the visitor experience will be improved with new play areas, learning centres, a shop and a cafe.
A significant amount of the funding has been secured through partnerships with Cyngor Gwynedd as part of the Llewyrch o’r Llechi project, Welsh Government, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and other funders.
The National Slate Museum is used as a base for the locomotives that run on the Llanberis Lake Railway with Hunslet ‘Una’ being a predominant feature in the museum over the years.
It is expected that the museum will go ‘on the road’ in 2025, visiting a variety of places that will be confirmed soon.
It is expected that the museum will reopen in 2026
We are happy to see the work to redevelop Amgueddfa Lechi Cymru moving to the next stage. This is a flagship development for the Llewyrch o’r Llechi project led by Cyngor Gwynedd and funded through UK Government, which will establish the Museum as the main hub for The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales World Heritage Site.
Councillor Nia Jeffreys, Cyngor Gwynedd’s Cabinet Member for Economy and Community
Responses
Not mentioned the redundancies, I notice.
It seems extraordinary to close this museum for 2 years to “breathe new life” into it. There is surely a danger that, with it missing for 2 years, a lot of people will just forget about it. I think it will also adversely affect the number of people who visit, and travel on, the Llanberis Lake railway.
How can a refurbishment possibly take 2 years to complete? They’re surely not going to knock down the historic buildings and re-build them? That would defeat the purpose of the museum which currently is fascinating because it preserves the buildings and their equipment as they were when they were in industrial slate mining use.