Move to Salts Mill will 'secure museum's future'

Last month, it was announced that the Peace Museum, currently based on an upper floor of a building on Piece Hall Yard, would be moving to Salts Mill in the World Heritage Site in Saltaire.

Now more details of the move have been revealed after the museum submitted a full planning application for the relocation.

The museum will be moving from its cramped city centre space – where exhibitions are split between several different rooms, to a large, long vacant third floor space at Salts Mill.

Peace Museum staff in the new space - image from Peace Museum (Image: Peace Museum)

The move out of the current site has been planned for years, and is being made possible thanks to a National Lottery Grant of £245,000.

It is hoped that the work will be completed by Summer 2024.

The plans show that the relocated museum will include a 280 square metre exhibition space, retail area, office space, 49.3 square metre event and education space, and a class-room area.

The Peace Museum opened in 1998, and is the only UK museum dedicated to peace. It holds a variety of artefacts linked to the Peace movement, from protest banners to letters and posters.

But the museum’s city centre premises had a number of constraints. It could only be accessed by a staircase – making it inaccessible for many.

And the limited space meant many of the large collection of banners and signs had to remain in storage.

Banners on display in the Peace Museum (Image: newsquest)

Salts Mill is the crown jewel of Sir Titus Salt’s model village of Saltaire. Although it is home to a book shop, gallery containing works by David Hockney and a restaurant and café, there are large areas of the Grade II listed mill that remain empty.

The planning application says: “The relocation of the museum to Salts Mill provides an opportunity for improving its accessibility and prominence, renew its exhibitions and interpretation, provide better facilities for visitor including school parties and researchers and to provide more practical staff facilities.

“The relocation of the museum from a constrained and relatively inaccessible building, with fragmented spaces over different floors, to a completely open single space will al-low the museum’s exhibitions and education work to be vastly improved and secured for the future.

Salts Mill (Image: Peace Museum)

“The intention is for the Peace Museum to be a ‘good fit’ with Salts Mill, respectful of the Saltaire context but clearly a distinct space with its own history and purpose.”

A decision on the application is expected next month.