Press Release 24 November 2006

£10,000 lottery funding for Police Museum

By Jo Blake

The Old Police Cells Museum in Brighton has been awarded £10,000 funding from the National Lottery.

Brighton Town Hall was built in 1830 and the design included the borough's very first police station in the basement of the building. A few years after the opening of the Town Hall, the police station became immediately infamous as the only station in the UK where the Chief Constable was murdered in his own office, a fact which remains to this day.

The museum first opened its doors to the general public in May 2005 during the Brighton Festival Fringe. It has since grown from strength to strength with hundreds of people visiting the old cells this year alone.

Closed for the winter, the museum will open again on 21st May 2007 as part of the Festival Fringe after the cells have been used as an unusual stage for performances of Harold Pinter plays during the festival.

Councillor Pat Drake, who has worked tirelessly to make the dream of the museum a reality, said:

"We are all so thrilled to have been granted this money to make sure the museum can prosper. We can now set up a website, improve signage and pay for the cleaning and decoration of the museum. We will also be in a position to train a volunteer to become a dedicated museum assistant.

"We are in the process of reclaiming other cells to increase the size of the museum and we are carried along by the enthusiasm of retired and serving police officers and council staff on our museum committee and have had wonderful support from the Brighton Prince's Trust and graphics students from the University of Brighton.

"We are absolutely dependant on volunteers to keep the museum going, so if anyone would like to help out next year or anyone who may have some old police artifacts that they would like to lend the museum, please contact me on 01273 291151."