There's life after mining for the museum built on coal

Apr 16 2009 by Dave Black, The Journal

A MINING-based tourist attraction created with the help of £10m in lottery funding has comfortably exceeded its target visitor numbers almost two and a half years after opening.

The £16m Woodhorn Museum and Archives Centre in Ashington, Northumberland was opened by the Princess Royal in October 2006 following a major refurbishment backed by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Bosses set a target of attracting 100,000 visitors in its first year and 75,000 in subsequent years to its impressive collection of mining displays, spectacular exhibitions, unique colliery buildings and priceless collection of historic records.

Now the former pit museum has hit the 250,000-visitor mark well ahead of schedule, despite last year suffering from one of the wettest summers on record. It has exceeded its visitor targets every year since opening, and in 2008/09 attracted just under 90,000 people – 15,000 more than the target

Woodhorn has also received a major visitor boost recently with the popularity of the Cars of the Stars exhibition, which showcases vehicles made famous in hit films and TV series over 40 years.

Yesterday director Keith Merrin said: “Even though we have been open for more than two years now we are still seeing many more visitors than we originally expected.

“The spring has been amazing with our Cars of the Stars exhibition combining with the normal Woodhorn experience to attract more then 30,000 visitors since the start of February, more than 15% up on the same period last year. Users of our archives and numbers of school visits have also broken all previous records over the last 12 months.”

Marketing officer Deborah Tate said: “We are delighted with the visitor numbers and are just flying along.

“The Heritage Lottery had their fingers burned after funding some other big projects and didn’t want to be embarrassed again. They asked us what we knew we could deliver here in terms of visitor numbers, and we were very realistic.’’ The Woodhorn complex includes 100-year-old colliery buildings which are now unique in the British coalfields, galleries showcasing historic miners’ lodge banners, a collection of work by Ashington’s famed Pitmen Painters and a permanent Coal Town exhibition.