What Will Be Provided As Part Of The Community Centre Redevelopment?

Main Community Centre

• The project will redevelop and extend the current St Bridget’s Community Centre in traditional materials in keeping with its Churchyard position and status of the nearby Conservation Area while retaining the historic sandstone-built museum and old schoolrooms which form the frontage of the site.
• The project will deliver a new larger main hall (10.7m by 9.1m) addressing the problem of condensation and slippery floor, the lack of a servery from the current kitchen, the need for specific facilities for and the increased size of user groups while expanding the role of the centre as a cultural, social and educational facility to the community.
• A central corridor will be provided to link all the rooms within the centre – in particular the Charles Dawson Brown Museum to the main hall, kitchen area and toilets thereby expanding its future role and the provision a direct, secure link between the old schoolrooms (rented for weekday teaching by the adjacent St Bridget’s Primary School) to the adjacent school.

Other Features will be:

• Provision for a museum interpretative area featuring its contents and a display on the history of West Kirby,
• Additional storage will be made available to user groups to make use of the centre more convenient,
• New toilets will be provided including facilities for the mobility-impaired and baby changing.
• An upgrade of the kitchen facilities will be included in the design.
• Refurbishment of the old schoolrooms and museum with improved lighting, better heating, display and storage areas and
• An improved, accessible pathway link between the church and the centre.
• The centre will be larger, energy-efficient, incorporate sustainable features with improved lighting, central heating, double-glazing, solar panels, provision for use of rainwater
• Full accessibility for the mobility-impaired will be built in.

A bird’s eye view of the new centre and the museum is shown above. Click any photo to enlarge. (Artwork by Stewart Jones, Infinite 3D, Westbourne Road, West Kirby)

 

Charles Dawson Brown Museum

It was decided as part of the redevelopment to retain the museum in its present accommodation but that any redevelopment should enhance the museum, improve the interpretation of the artefacts, introduce information on local history and allow it to be opened to the community on more frequent occasions to be used as a resource for schools and groups interested in local history. The links to Viking history (especially the hog back stone) are particularly exciting and relevant in view of the resurgence in interest in the Vikings in Wirral and the unfolding picture of their settlement of the area.

An artist’s impressions of the inside of the museum after restoration are shown alongside. Click any photo to enlarge. (NOTE: the artefacts illustrated are not in all cases the real items but artistic templates!)

It is planned that the museum will be doubled in size with the construction of a new room for interpretative material and a few of the artefacts next to the current room. It is also planned that mobility displays on local subjects may be prepared for local history days in the main hall of the centre.

The museum will be linked by a new corridor connecting it with the rest of the Community Centre and giving access to the facilities there – toilets, servery for refreshments and a new expanded hall. It is hoped the hall will be useful for lectures on the museum and local history, receiving museum visitors and allow special displays of mobile boards on local history and receive visitors to the Church as well as the museum.