Chairman’s AGM Talk – 2025

2025 rushed by in a flash, and we are already in the second half of 2026. How did that happen? Then I look back at minutes and notes from early 2025 and see that we were just completing the decant of the museum and working with the Heritage Associates to set up the Ambler Room exhibition at Ayscoughfee. So much has happened since then. Although we miss our museum hugely, we have settled well into Ayscoughfee and Broadgate House.   

Having our exhibitions at Ayscoughfee has brought more visitors there, which in turn is bringing more recognition to our Society, which will help us when we re-open the 1911 building next spring. However, with our much smaller space in Broad Street, we will be continuing exhibitions in the Ayscoughfee downstairs gallery and will be helping with the curation of the Ambler Room exhibitions, which will showcase Ayscoughfee’s Collection with some loans from us.  

Our local history library in the Centre for Fenland Studies room in Ayscoughfee is well used by researchers and also as a meeting room for us. It’s really brilliant to have developed such a good working relationship between us all. We thank South Holland District Council and the Ayscoughfee Hall Museum staff for making us so welcome. 

At the start of 2025, Broadgate House was pretty chaotic as we filled it with the library and the collection, but order has been created and the two floors we occupy are invaluable. Most days now there are people working there on conservation, digitisation, and cataloguing. The administrative office is there and many meetings are held there too. Having our stores at Broadgate House has enabled us to keep changing the Ayscoughfee exhibitions and to continue cataloguing our collection and library and to keep our Society going.

From the Arts Council, we have secured grant funding for a new database. The Arts Council England Museum Estate & Development Fund (MEND) grant did not include funding to re-curate the 1911 building, so Dustin achieved funding for this through the Art Fund Reimagine grant and with that we have Curatorial Assistant Maria Marquez, who is working with 16 collections champions – volunteers aged from secondary school to retirement. Both of these grants have attracted new volunteers. We have never had so many volunteers working together to bring our plans to fruition. Thank you so much.

The Museum Estate and Development Fund (shortened to MEND) and the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) grants are generating significant work and decision-making for the Trustees, staff and key volunteers. 

The 1911 building should be ready for re-occupation by the end of March 2027. The repair work on the 1911 museum has kept our building committee very busy, with constant discoveries of further repair work required as the builders, Messengers of Stamford, progress the repairs. 

The latest discovery is that the lintel above the window on the front of the building is giving way, requiring the front gable to be rebuilt as well as the chimney. This is really challenging our budget for that phase of the rebuild. The original grant, together with our 10% match funding, was £2,191,317. This was to demolish the rear extensions and to repair the 1911 building as per the initial work we thought would be required. The empty building allowed more surveys, and it was decided that we needed to underpin the whole building, which was not in the budget.  When we applied to MEND, we were not able to recover VAT, but that changed when we achieved VAT 33A status and we should have given that recovered VAT to Arts Council, who administer the MEND fund, but they allowed us to keep the refunds and that paid for the piling. But since then costs of everything have risen, many more major faults have been discovered as plaster was removed and as scaffolding was put up outside, and we now find ourselves with a further £350,000 to find. Adding to the work of the fundraising consultant and our grants and fundraising team. In total, repairing the 1911 building is costing almost a million pounds more than our grant.   

Last year you will have heard me talk about the NLHF Development grant award of £660,000 and the number of consultants that would bring to our New Beginnings project to convert our neighbouring building into an extension to our museum. Originally built in 1920 as Levertons car sales room and workshop, it is now referred to as the heritage engineering works. After an extensive procurement process, which had the core team of Dustin, Jonathan Dobbs and myself scoring almost 100, 60-page application forms and supported by our project manager Greenwoods, we now have the full team in place. 

The first appointments were the Design team MICA, architects who have considerable museum experience, most recently with the Horniman Museum. Their team includes structural engineer Bob Webster of Yorksills, who is also on the MEND project. MICA’s team also includes a mechanical and electrical engineer, a fire engineer and an access consultant.  Many of you will have met two of their team at the Ayscoughfee workshop in July. 

The next appointments were for the quantity surveyors PMP. They have been able to provide very detailed costings for the MICA plans because the Development Grant has funded very thorough surveying of the Levertons site and Bob Webster working on both sites now has good knowledge of the ground conditions and has already drawn up the piling that will be required for this site. This was not envisaged when we applied for our grant, nor was the huge hike in costs and fees that the last two years have brought.  

The plans that you saw at Ayscoughfee, together with all the other project costs included in the application, such as staff, equipment, activities and contingencies, have been costed at over £14 million for an over 800sq m building. This is £5m more than our original application.  We have now had MICA produce two more plans, one of which removes the education and lecture room and some smaller rooms; this is costed at £11.7m for a 599 sq m building. This is still £2.25m more than our original application, which was to be for a building of 791 sq m. PMP have also estimated that the funds of the original application would now only give us a building of about 400 sq m.  

We will be meeting with the NLHF team to discuss their thoughts on cost increases and possible further funding. Together with the plans, they have been sent the first drafts of the fundraising working documents.  

Arts Council and NLHF work closely together and I was speaking with our NLHF investment manager about funding for the MEND overspend and warned that the New Beginnings costs were vastly higher than our application. The response was, this is why you have a Development phase before you can apply for a millions-of-pounds delivery phase, so that buildings can be properly surveyed, that you have consultants to lead you to a sustainable and successful future. We know the costs will go up, they always do. 

So although we are anxious about our meeting, we are also hopeful that we will come away with a working plan for the way forward – to guide us and our consultants to build an engaging, accessible and sustainable home for the Society’s members, collections and activities.  

We are now working with all the consultants for the New Beginnings project. When I say WE, that is Dustin, Jonathan and me as the core team, and then someone relevant from our committees is also working with each of the consultants. The design team, fundraising, business planning, activities, website and branding, communications and evaluation consultants. Each of them has had a day with us in Spalding. It is still in the early stages, but their working documents are at the first draft stage. There will need to be surveys and consultations with members and the public; we will try not to do too many, but please take part if you are asked. It is important. We have lots to do to get to the stage that we can submit the Delivery phase application, hopefully in the spring, but maybe not till autum next year.  

So far we know that the NLHF will give us £4.5m, if we succeed with the development phase, which hopefully can increase a bit, and we will get £1m from the Town / Neighbourhood Board. It’s a good start to our fundraising. There are several other big funders we can go to, but most require us to have planning permission, so we have to wait.  We will be going to businesses and individuals with funding requests. If you know any people or businesses that you think might give us a donation or could organise a fundraiser, please talk to or email me, whether it’s small or larger amounts, we will need them all. We have a long way to go. Later on, we will be making a general appeal to the public and members. We have to prove that we are well underway with bringing in funds before we can submit the delivery phase application – which is quite an ask in the short amount of time we have.

For the last few years, Diane Clay has been our librarian. She has built up a team of assistants and the amount of cataloguing and sorting they have been getting through is astonishing. Diane and her husband Phil are moving to be closer to their family. Close enough to visit now and again, but not close enough for Di to continue as librarian and Council Member. Di, thank you for all that you have done for SGS and for creating a team who can continue your good work. Phil has been our assistant curator for many years, always willing to assist, carry and move items or just be there. Thank you, your help, especially during decant, has been hugely appreciated. Di and Phil, we will miss you.  Cherry Jeffrey and Corinne Neal are jointly to be our new librarians, but do not wish to be Council members. Thank you both for the fantastic work you are doing. 

Pat Wensor and I thank you for returning us for a further term on Council, currently it is busy, but fascinating and rewarding. We welcome Chris Penney to Council. He is on the Building committee and, as building consultant and quantity surveyor, his knowledge has been invaluable for the MEND project, and he is now also the building committee representative on the New Beginnings project.

The Trustees have been continuing with governance training.  Two things in particular have come to the fore.  

1. Firstly, our Constitution is getting past its use-by date. Our President, Hon Secretary, and Hon Treasurer, along with lawyer member Richard Lewis, are reviewing the Constitution. For example, one of the things to review is that our Constitution apparently does not allow us to trade, yet to be sustainable we have to be able to make some money. As members, in time, you will be asked to vote on the revision to adopt it.
2. Secondly, succession planning. Some of this comes within the Constitution. But for now, on the ground, we have split our two larger committees to create more groups to enable more people to be involved and learn about how SGS functions.  

So Collections and Research committee is now two separate groups. And Engagement has become three groups: Members Services, Life Long Learning and Events, and we still have the finance and the building and infrastructure committees. The Member Services, Lifelong Learning and Events committees in particular are keen for new members. If you are interested or know someone who might be able to help these groups, please talk to Sue Martinelli, Michael Gilbert and Sharon Hoult (who chair these groups) or to me.  

We also have volunteering opportunities in a variety of administrative ways, or if you have knowledge of anything we’ve collected or might collect (such as jewellery, glass, truncheons, archaeology, or any of our curiosities), or you’d like to learn more about something, or you’d like to get involved but have no idea of what you could do, please talk to us.

Finally, I just would like again to thank everyone who volunteers for us, and all of you, our members.

Petronella Keeling
Chairman, Spalding Gentlemen’s Society
chairman@sgsoc.org