SWANSEA: Leaking roof has shut galleries at Wales’s oldest museum

Galleries at Swansea Museum have been closed and exhibits taken off display because rain is coming through the roof.

Swansea Council says the roof of the 1841 building on Victoria Road has been failing for several years, and that temporary repairs no longer work.

Water has damaged the inside of the building as well as forcing collections off show, according to the council, which warns that doing nothing would risk “potential loss of collections”.

A full replacement is now planned, paid for entirely by the Welsh Government. The council says it will not have to put in any money of its own.

There is a deadline. The grant has to be spent and claimed by 31 March 2027, and the contract for the work has still to be awarded.

How much the roof will cost has not been made public. The figure is being kept for the private part of a cabinet meeting on Wednesday 18 November.

The grant bid that went in before councillors signed it off

Cabinet is being asked to approve the bid after the event. The council says the application had to go in to meet a tight Welsh Government deadline, before councillors could consider it.

The award letter is dated 2 April, and the council’s finance director signed the acceptance on 24 April.

The roof was already on the council’s own repair list, with money set aside for it. That money will now go to other council buildings instead.

Solar panels were looked at and left out. The council says they would have made the job more complicated, and will be considered separately.

Two Welsh Government grants in a year

It is the second time in just over a year that Cardiff Bay has paid for work at the museum. Last September it funded new lighting for the History Gallery and the temporary exhibition space.

In July the Welsh Government named Swansea Museum among 31 projects sharing £5.28m, without saying how much it would get or what for.

The Grade II* listed building was put up for the Royal Institution of South Wales. The council describes it as the oldest museum in Wales, with the largest collection outside National Museum Wales.

The extension that was due by March 2026

In 2023 the council unveiled plans for a new-build extension with more gallery and learning space, conservation stores and a café. It was one part of a £20m levelling-up project that also took in the Hafod-Morfa Copperworks and The Strand.

The council added £8.76m of its own and said the whole project would be finished by March 2026.

That did not happen. The levelling-up money is reported to have been switched to the copperworks alone in a decision taken in private in October last year.

The council is reported to have said then that designs for the museum were complete and it was looking for other funding.

Next week’s decision covers the roof alone and makes no mention of the extension. Cabinet meets at 10am on Wednesday 18 November at the Guildhall.