When Debbie Holmes closed the door for the last time on the 1940's living museum she’d run for more than a decade her rent was heading upwards of £1,000 a month.

Three in every five small local museums — like the one Debbie ran — reportedly fear closure this year amid “unsustainable” rising costs and falling visitor numbers. Senior reporter Lauren Abbott asks what it means for the preservation of Kent’s history?

There is a risk that precious historical artefacts could soon become consigned to storage or sold to private collectors. Then there’s the long-term implications of the loss of such important resources to towns and schools.

Sittingbourne’s Old Forge Wartime House — that depicted life on the home front during the Second World War — had welcomed everyone from school groups to film and television crews through its period living room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom since it opened in 2014.

But, with the team struggling to cover rising bills since the pandemic, last April Debbie Holmes made the ‘heart-breaking’ decision to close the replica 1940s house in East Street.

She’d passionately run the project, which had been connected to their family for generations, for more than a decade alongside her sister Louise Leppenwell.

“It was impossible” she recalls. “Our rent was put up to well over £1,000 a month.

“We are still paying off one of the last energy bills. We came out of it owing money.”

Debbie’s experience is becoming increasingly common as small, independent museums — those with fewer than 100,000 annual visitors — face declining visitor numbers and a reduction in the amount of money people spend or donate.

Reliant heavily on community involvement and local tourism to sustain operations, there are warnings many towns face losing local assets this year, and with it their role in town centre economies, as well as irreplaceable links to hundreds of years of local history.

A regular at living history events and re-enactments, Debbie was aware there might be interest from private collectors in the huge number of items, mostly from the Second World War, that the Old Forge had become guardian to over the years.

But having believed wholeheartedly in giving adults and children a “hands-on” approach to understanding wartime history her team sought other small attractions that could adopt collections when the house closed.

Most items ultimately moved to a new home at either Ramsgate Tunnels or the Battle of Britain Museum in Hawkinge.

She explains: “We didn’t want it to go into the wrong hands. That’s tragic.

“We didn’t want anyone to make money out of it. We didn’t want someone to end up with it in a private collection where it couldn’t be seen.”

Debbie said she’s seen and heard accounts of other small museums being forced to take items to auction during a closure and while she acknowledges private collectors do appreciate and look after them, she says it means communities wave goodbye to parts of their past their unlikely to get back.

“That town’s history goes and once it has gone you cannot get it back” she warned.

In April last year Medway Council announced it was closing its tourist help desk office in Rochester High Street as part of a council cost-cutting exercise.

It also saw free entry into the Guildhall Museum scrapped in favour of a £5 admission charge, as well as cuts to opening hours at Eastgate House and Upnor Castle.

And back in September 2021, having been hit hard by the pandemic, the neighbouring Huguenot Museum said it was closing to the public over winter to enable its trustees put together a rescue plan before reopening the following summer.

With many museums reporting that incomes have not returned to pre-Covid levels, last month the education group Kids in Museums launched its ‘Small Days Out’ campaign in an attempt to encourage more households to support local, independent attractions.

It claims the sector is facing the most challenging period it has “ever seen”.

With better weather and a raft of school holidays ahead — both of which are vital to generating income — the group wants to encourage more people to set foot inside smaller venues when choosing a family outing.

While the Old Forge had “fantastic support” from people outside the area, says Debbie, she believes it was less local footfall that made survival impossible.

She added: “We had people come from Dorset and from London or other people from other countries when they were visiting. The majority of people came from out of town.

“We didn’t get the local support. You don’t realise what’s on your doorstep.

People would say ‘we must come down’ but they didn’t

“People would say ‘we must come down’ but they didn’t.”

There’s an added consequence too - she believes - to town’s losing their museums which provide a vital learning tool for pupils and often make for affordable trips for schools.

“The sad thing is you will get a whole generation who don’t appreciate these links to history” she explained.

“If children don’t learn the lessons of the past it’s hard for them to make informed decisions going forward.

“They are losing such a valuable part of their education’

“We are losing our heritage. Who we are and where we are and how we got there.”

Keeping precious artefacts locked away is something frustrating Gravesend historian Chris Bull who fears scores of items – all with very important links to Gravesham – face languishing in storage forever because the town doesn’t have a museum of its own.

Since 1970 Gravesend maintained ‘popular’ displays in the town’s Old Town Hall, thanks to support from Gravesend Historical Society, but with the building needing repair and other projects earmarked for the site, this closed in around 2007.

As a result Chris says the majority of items were shifted into storage – with just a handful now on display at various locations in Gravesend including at the Civic Centre’s own gallery and also at Milton Chantry near the river, which opens on certain days.

But in 2013 tragedy struck when more than 20 items that had been sent to the council’s Brookvale Depot in Northfleet for safekeeping were stolen – none of which are understood to have ever been recovered or returned.

In 2015, then council leader Cllr John Cubitt pledged to find a new site for a museum by the end of his four year administration but in 2017 he was forced to step down because of ill health, passing away later that same year while funding for a new and permanent site remains a contentious issue.

“I am appalled but I know why and it is because of funding” said Chris who suggests constant ‘war’ between central and local governments over money has done nothing to support authorities in protecting and investing in local history.

“I understand that most of it is at the Civic Centre but I have never seen it.

“They (the council) are the guardians but they are our artefacts.”

Without the cash for a museum, as well as keeping so many ‘3D’ aspects of history hidden from public view, Chris too shares the view of Kids in Museums - that these smaller attractions can prove vital to the success of a local economy.

Chris said: “What we need are visitors. Gravesham needs visitors.

“You have to have a reason to visit somewhere.

“If you ask the public, the appetite would be there.”