Page 8 - Flaming Cauldron – Issue 58

ACC ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER

Building the new RLC Museum

The story of the new RLC Museum starts more
than 10 years ago, when it became clear that The
Princess Royal Barracks in Deepcut was to be
sold by the MOD. The majority of the units in
Deepcut, including The RLC Museum, were to
be moved and rehoused in a brand-new barracks
being built at Worthy Down near Winchester in
2019/20.
Trustees of the museum held many long and
detailed meetings with architects from SKANSKA,
who were building the new barracks, to determine
what the new museum would look like. From these
meetings a new museum building slowly emerged,
going through many changes before a final design
was agreed.
The new museum would have a large central
gallery and mezzanine, offices, archive and object
stores, a vehicle store, a medal room, a research The impressive front of the within the museum, putting it on public display for
room and a café. The size of the new museum new RLC museum the first time.
would broadly match the size of the old museum, Fitting out and redesigning a new museum
along with its offsite storage locations. However, in this way, starting from scratch and building
better and more efficient use of space meant that a everything from new is an expensive business.
much larger central gallery could be achieved. Industry guidelines based on our new square foot-
The new museum was being built during phase age of display area indicated that this whole process
three at Worthy Down and was thus one of the could cost up to £3 Million. Fortunately, a charitable
final buildings delivered. It is an impressive black donation of this amount was very kindly provided
box building, controlling light, temperature and by an organisation called the DEFLOG VQ Trust,
air humidity, capable of providing a stable and who had provided vocational and apprentice train-
safe environment in which to hold the museum ing to young servicemen and women.
collection. Whilst a new building and money for an inter-
The delivery of a new and much larger gallery nal fitout were clearly essential. To help The RLC
meant that the museum would need to more than Museum realise its full potential, an experienced
double the number display cases and this gave museum design company would also be required.
the opportunity to completely retell the story of This company must not only work in partnership
the RLC and its predecessor Corps. Many more with the museum team on the new design and
objects, including vehicles, uniforms, medals, retelling of our story but must also be capable of
archives and weapons could be put on display. New bringing in all the specialist sub-contractors who
text panels, images, interactive displays and audio would be required.
visual content could be incorporated. Moreover, A tender board and selection process com-
the world class RCT Medal Collection, hither to, menced in 2017, resulting in PLB being selected as
hidden away in an officer’s mess, was to be located the museum partners for this project. They would

PAGE 8 SECRETARY@ACCASSOCIATION.ORG | WWW.ACCASSOCIATION.ORG