WORK will get underway this week to demolish the remnants of the Agricultural Museum at Coate.

The museum has not been open since the 1980s and the building it was housed in, a substantial wooden barn, had since been used by the council to store a varied mix of historical items.

Firefighters were called on the morning of New Year’s Eve following reports that the building had been engulfed in flames.

They arrived to find the barn well alight but their rapid intervention, including the use of powerful water jets from an aerial appliance, meant that the worst scenario was averted.

When the smoke had cleared, it was revealed that many of the larger items in the barn had survived the blaze.

The building, however, was not so lucky. Partially destroyed in the incident, it now sits with precariously hanging roof beams exposed and key structural elements weakened.

Coun Garry Perkins, Cabinet Member for Culture, explained that the first priority was to make the barn safe and secure.

Contractors worked into the evening on Friday to erect wooden boarding around the open end of the barn.

Coun Perkins said: “These guys have worked quickly to get this boarded up and that will be done by this evening. Next week they will get started on the roof, it looks like it’s going to be a cherry picker job.

“It’s obviously dangerous because once those beams get sodden they can fall down inside. Once you take that part of the roof off it will be a lot safer.”

It appears clear that the building will need to be demolished. What happens to the items inside is the question many in the heritage community are asking.

“The decision will be whether we build another building or whether we take the opportunity to get the stuff on show – that’s the option I prefer at this stage,” said Coun Perkins.

In the interim however the items will go into council-owned industrial units for storage.

The Richard Jefferies Museum and others had offered to store and show the items but those offers have not yet been taken up.

“They don’t really have the space up there,” said Coun Perkins. “It’s possible we could put some stuff on show at Lydiard in the Café courtyard. We’ve already got some pieces up there so we could expand that.”

It is still not clear that anyone knows exactly what the barn contains, it has been added to at various points over the years and an effort attempt to catalogue the items about three years ago was not fully completed.

Coun Perkins accepted that the contents did need accounting for and said that the updating of records would would form part of the recovery process.