Heritage Centre - Trust Annual Report 1996
This has been an uncertain year for the Heritage Centre, with all our energies channelled into saving the Heritage Centre from closure, following the loss of our grant from the City Council which covered the £7,000 annual rent bill.
Our main concern has been to alert as many people as possible to our predicament, and to seek support for our plans about which you will read in more detail elsewhere in this Report.
One room in the Centre has been turned over to displaying the proposed plans for extending the Centre, complete with a model of the extension, and also the Broadway section of the Roger Brown model of the City in 1870.
The Centre was kept open on Saturdays during the period from November 1995 until the end of March 1996, in order to display some of John Brimfield's large collection of postcards of Winchester in times past, which also served to illustrate Nick McPherson's series of lectures on the history of the City.
Our visitor numbers have fluctuated wildly in a cool May and a hot June and July, reflecting similar tourist interest throughout the City. A new Heritage Centre leaflet has been designed by Mike Lee - any potential distributors for these leaflets would be most welcome.
The annual Hampshire Chronicle photo-quiz of little known Winchester places was held in May - once again designed by Alan Cooke, and causing lots of head-scratching and mind-searching. The City's Cycle Week was marked in June by an exhibition of past cycling glories and the newly planned City cycleways. The usual half-term quiz will be held during the autumn school term, under quiz-master Tony Hunter.
As part of the Trust's continuing policy to enable the public to see and learn about our City, the Winchester Fire Brigade is putting on an exhibition of the history of fire fighting in Winchester in the Heritage Centre in September and October 1996.
We shall be holding a fund-raising book sale in St Maurice's Covert on Saturday 26 October, so please turn out your bookshelves.
We do not know when we shall hear it is our sucess or failure with the Lottery Fund, but it is our goal that ,if we are successful, we shall keep the Centre open to some degree throughout the building operations.
Finally, in response to popular demand, our Christmas card will be available with or without a seasonal message, making it useful all the year round.