Grants for construction and refurbishment work at 34 museums throughout the UK have been announced by culture minister Barbara Follett. The £4m grants include £150,000 for the Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes. The grant will be used to create a new Bronze Age Gallery to house material excavated from the heart of the Stonehenge World Heritage site.
     The new gallery will feature Britain's richest Bronze Age burial, found at Bush Barrow, near Stonehenge. The finds from the burial have been described by the Daily Mail as 'Britain's first Crown Jewels'. The gold finds will be on permanent display in Wiltshire for the first time in generations.
     The Museum is home to the best Bronze Age collections in Britain, and the new displays will be at the heart of a revitalised museum, which will also feature a lift to enable access to all the museum displays. The new gallery will be developed in collaboration with the planned new Stonehenge Visitor Centre.
     Chairman Bill Perry said, "This substantial grant is a major step forward towards our goal of putting the gold objects from the Stonehenge Bush Barrow on permanent display and creating new galleries to display our important prehistoric collections. It is the first success in our fundraising campaign that we launched in May this year."

Source: Wiltshire Heritage Museum (31 August 2009), New Civil Engineer (2 September 2009)