History of the Museum

Leominster Museum has been financially independent from the very beginning, and is run wholly by volunteers.

How the Museum started

In 1970 a visionary group of Leominster people recognised a local desire for a museum to bring together a fascinating range of historically significant objects that were in random individual ownership. They got together to create a charitable trust, to raise money by public subscription to buy and convert what for some decades had been a motorcycle repair workshop; the building had originally been built in 1855 as a Mission Hall by Quakers concerned for the well-being and spiritual needs of the town, not least with the advent of the large community of navvies building the local railways.  The building was re-opened as a Museum on 1st April 1972.

The original board recording the names of subscribers

The original Trustees of that charitable trust, whose signatures on the 1970 Trust Deed are shown here, were Norman Davis (a pharmacist), Colin Everett (a bank manager), Elizabeth Thomas (a farmer) and Denis Turton (a solicitor).  (Elizabeth Thomas, the last surviving founder trustee, retired as a  charity trustee at the 2018 AGM. and was appointed as Patron of the CIO (see below) so retains her close connection.)  The Trust Deed provided for a Management Committee to assist the Trustees, whose members were elected each year by a general meeting of local residents.

Modernising the charity structure

In 2015 it was decided to modernise the legal structure of the Museum charity by converting to become a “charitable incorporated organisation” or CIO.  This form of charity is, like a company, a separate legal entity in its own right –but, unlike a charitable company, a CIO brings with it no obligation to comply with company law on top of the requirements of charity law.

Leominster Museum CIO was incorporated in July 2015, but the detailed preparations for the CIO to take the Museum over from the original charitable trust were time-consuming. The formal steps in the hand-over process –– finally took place in March 2016.  The 1970 charitable trust, which had served the town well, was removed from the register of charities a few weeks later.

Workings of the CIO – Membership of the charity

The CIO’s Constitution allows anyone who is interested in furthering the purposes of the Museum to register as a voting member of the CIO, with the right to vote on the election of charity trustees and other matters. We want to encourage as many people as possible to be members, so we set a very low annual membership fee for ordinary voting membership.

At the same time our traditional Friends scheme continues; Friends are automatically voting members of the CIO without needing to pay a separate membership fee, and we organise occasional events of interest to Friends to thank them for their support.

Annual membership subscriptions, payable on joining and in January each year afterwards, are as follows.  (These are minimum rates – many have generously continued to give more than the minimum each year.)

• Ordinary voting membership £3 per person

• Personal Friends membership £15 for an individual, or £25 for two people at the same address

• Business Friends membership £50

Application forms to become a Friend or an Ordinary Voting Member are available from the Reception desk.

Our charity trustees

The charity trustees of Leominster Museum CIO, are listed below.

• Geoffrey Crofts – Chair
• Chris Jarman – Hon. Treasurer
• Deborah Jarman – Voluntary Education and Outreach Officer
• Malcolm Mason – Voluntary Curator
• Sue McKenzie
• Ted Rogers
• Lean Kee
• Stuart Currie
• John O’Connell

We remain on the lookout for additional charity trustees to help guide the Museum forward; for more information please use the Contact page.