The Herbert (Art Gallery & Museum)

Anne - As you know, the Sandy Lane site was primarily an industrial site when the council first took on this building for storage purposes. Over the years things have changed and now the area is covered in new housing. My own thoughts are that if they see fit to close the main museum then they are just as likely to close and dispose of the site at Sandy Lane for even more houses and to make more easy money for the council. In recent weeks the council has closed their Customer Services Department in Broadgate House and re-located it in the central library (the old Locarno). Maybe they are going to dispose of Broadgate House as well? The worst scenario is that the council will find that it has too many exhibits at both Coventry Transport Museum and The Herbert so it will just sell them off to raise a bit more easy cash. It could well be that the changing population in Coventry sees less value in old cars and museums and so they may well support the decisions made by their council. After all, if they want some information about something old, they can just look on their phone!

Hello, Thank you. I believe that library services themselves are in their last days. Just like the banks.

Yes, not local. I knew Sandy Lane well, having worked in the 60's and early 70's in what is now Harp Place, now flats, and also the other end, now Electric Wharf, also housing. I think at that time the storage building may have been the bus garage. In later years when visiting mum in the care home next to Merrick Lodge we often used to see nice Jaguars go into the storage. I think many people are still interested in old cars, there are still lots of car shows and meets and also many TV programmes. But I think these are enthusiasts that like to see cars been done up to be back on the road. Also who wants to drive into the middle of Coventry to see cars when you can have a nice day out at say Gaydon.

Today's Coventry Telegraph says that Coventry City Council plan to use the former Ikea building to exhibit some of the vehicles currently on show in Coventry Transport Museum and in store elsewhere. It also says that other exhibits will be disposed of. This brings me back to my earlier fear that someone in the council will choose the pretty vehicles and those which casual visitors want to see, but will quietly dispose of the huge amount of more mundane stuff currently in both the museum and their store in Sandy Lane. The council have previously said that these are longer term plans to redevelop the north side of the city centre, presumably after they have completed the current housing development in the south side of the city centre. Their plans would also allow for the redevelopment of the Sandy Lane site for more housing. I do agree with Anne, lots of people do enjoy a day out at either a local car show or at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon. However, the city centre museums used to attract a lot of casual visitors, me included, who would pop in for a quick browse while they were in the city centre shopping or for some other reason. Of course, there are are now far fewer shops so less people visit the city centre during the day time. We will wait and see, but somehow I think that future generations will be deprived of seeing the actual history of motor cars in the city of Coventry, or at best will see a very condensed version

A report in the on-line edition of today's Coventry Telegraph talks about the disposal of items from the Herbert, The Coventry Transport Museum, and ancillary stores. They are described as the 'unwanted list' among 300,000 exhibits and will be 'cleared out'. It appears that these items will be offered to other museums and similar organisations and then disposed of by other means. The report talks about freeing up space, but whether that means for future more trendy exhibits, or because the future museums will have less storage space, I don't know.

Looking at the list of stuff that was to be 'cleared out' last time, the items were mostly of low interest and the others were probably duplicates. The items were likely donated at some point. I've a feeling that's where most of the books for sale in the archive come from. I'm less concerned that they're clearing out some stuff, than that they don't display the historical gems they've got. There are paper items that need copying and made available for research because the originals are falling to pieces. Copying to microfilm has proven dubious because they're of limited quality and hard to use. eg there are lists of main householders by street going back to 1752, which would be very useful to family history researchers but it's a pig to use. Not only do you need a reader machine (cumbersome and prone to breaking) but the quality is poor. Digitising the original would be great and transcribing it would be even better but even a decent paper copy would be better than what they've got.

I don't have a problem with the council clearing out duplicates and items of low interest, also digitalising difficult to conserve paper exhibits. I do have concerns about the exhibits in the Coventry Transport Museum and the store at Sandy Lane. The council plans to build more housing on the site of the motor museum as part of their Coventry North initiative, and the Sandy Lane site is already surrounded by new housing. If these two sites are lost where will everything go? I know that the former Ikea site is one solution but I also read about other planned uses for much of that site.

A little gang of members and our esteemed host attended a small conference about various Coventry history issues, including one session about the Ikea building. There are plans to move some of the transport exhibition there. How much and what will happen to the rest is uncertain. Money is a big issue. While there are plans to expand the lower levels, I still think that there will be limited space. I think a big part of the problem stems from what we do and don't want from museums and galleries. Are they comprehensive records of a single subject or are they a jumble of interesting stuff? How often do they change the exhibits or is it designed for a seen and done crowd like school kids? How much swap out stuff do they need to keep the museum fresh? Visitor numbers, income and storage costs have to be key, and I'm not sure that most museums maximise their appeal. The big London museums have it easy because they have bucket list items that people from all over the World want to see and there is a ready audience in the vicinity to see them. (Well at least until some idiot is convinced to give the items back to the country of manufacture and/or the city becomes too dangerous to visit). For me, there is a market for a dedicated Coventry museum that shifts its displays but always uses the city, its people and its industries as the core. Parts of the transport museum could be incorporated but not serve as the main theme. eg Spon Street could link watch making, Rudge, GEC, trams, weaving, flooding, art works, politics, architecture, medieval defences, bombing, pubs and much more. It would need a narrative to pull it together but it would use a lot of the different stuff that the museums and archives preserve. Different parts of the city could be treated the same way, giving a clear path for new displays. It should be aimed at the people who regularly visit the city and who might be tempted to visit some of the other attractions if they knew more about them. The transport museum has done something like this but there's the pull between it being focused on Coventry's products or on the wider subject of transport as a whole. A difficult issue as it's a massive subject and the objects are themselves bulky. Does anyone know how the museum refreshes its displays and how often? I think the transport museum struggles because Coventry is not a natural tourist location. You can't pop off the motorway on the way to somewhere else to visit and ironically it's not next to a car park. I'd be interested to see the breakdown of numbers between Sandy Lane site and the city one. Museums have a lot of objects aside from the things they always display eg the Herbert has a lot of stuffed creatures. How does a museum use the random stuff? Who wants to see it? Are the items kept just as a record of the past in case someone thinks up a use for them or is it a form of hoarding behaviour? Ultimately I don't think that museums can afford to do that.

Prior to the opening of Coventry Transport Museum the cars and motoring items were displayed alongside other historical Coventry exhibits in what was then the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. At that time the surplus cars, motorcycles and other transport related items were stored in an industrial unit at the far end of Torrington Avenue. This store was occasionally open to the general public, as is the current store in Sandy Lane. There are a fair few old cars and other vehicles in the store which I have never seen on display in the current transport museum, and others which I vaguely recall as exhibits at the Herbert Museum several decades ago. There are a lot of vehicles packed into the storage facility, the British Motor Museum at Gaydon has a similar packed storage area above the Jaguar Museum but this is open every day to museum customers. All museums need to have sufficient exhibits in reserve so that they can rotate those on display to the general public or to stage very specific exhibitions. The problem with cars, vans, trucks, buses, motor cycles, and bicycles are that they are generally bulky things which therefore need a fair bit of storage space. They also need workshop facilities so that the exhibits can be maintained. If Coventry City Council decides to 'clear out' some of the transport related exhibits I do hope that local historians and engineers are consulted so that vehicles of some historical merit are retained. I have said before, I would hate to see engineering masterpieces disposed of just so we can keep Princess Diana's Metro - not that I have anything against either the car or the previous owner. Another alternative might be to loan out Coventry's museum assets to other relevant museums, for example the Coventry City open top bus could go to the bus museum at Wythall or the one at Aldridge, but not before the end of this season please because we will need it again in May, I do hope the museum mechanics are getting it ready. In the same way, military museums might be interested in the collection's military vehicles like the Humber Pig, and maybe a police museum would like the old Warwickshire Constabulary's 1963 mobile police station which was built on a Rootes Group Commer chassis and has a body made and fitted out by what was Eagle Engineering in Warwick.

They already loan Cars, Not Local, for example, the Grampian Motor Museum up here in Aberdeenshire has Vehicles which state "on loan from Coventry Transport Museum". Additionally there is the 'Moray Motor Museum' in Elgin and that's just two in my area !

A question I have, is there a dedicated thread for the Coventry Transport Museum?

Not for the museum Mike no - happy to start one but we do have this one relating to Coventry cars.

Both Coventry Transport Museum and The Herbert are run by an organisation called CV Life which is a collaboration between Culture Coventry Trust (CCT) and Coventry Sports Foundation (CSF). Both are independent charitable trusts, who work in partnership to deliver positive social impact for the people and communities they serve. This collaboration also run The Wave, the Alan Higgs Sports centre, and other leisure and sports centres within the city. Any decisions made by CV Life in respect of The Herbert will also impact on Coventry Transport Museum. Any decisions made by either of the collaborative charitable trusts could influence the sporting venues, and through CV Life influence The Herbert and Coventry Transport Museum. This management structure is gleaned from the CV Life website. I presume that Coventry City Council are behind both charitable trusts, and therefore behind CV Life.

Many thanks for the response Neil, though I have even posted on the Coventry-built Cars thread, and had forgotten about it. Having a 'small' photograph collection of Coventry built cars, worthy of sharing. It might be worth setting up a Coventry Transport Museum thread, the museum (just as The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum has), has a very interesting story to tell, especially with the Thrust 2 and Thrust SSC on display, plus a small but fabulous motor bike collection, and not forgetting Daimler buses.

Historic England is one of a few national organisations I follow, often with very short but interesting posts. With it being St Patricks Day, today's theme is "Irish Emigration to England Explored Through Historic Buildings". The only reason why I'm sharing this is because the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum gets a mention along with Sir Alfred Herbert. https://heritagecalling.com/2026/03/17/irish-emigration-to-england-explored-through-historic-buildings/