Conservation Management Plan - Tamworth Borough Council

Policy G12: Develop Tamworth Castle’s tourism and cultural provision role through
effective marketing, both of the Castle and the town as a whole and its key role in the
Saxon kingdom of Mercia.
Policy G13: Develop and implement a policy on the sustainable sourcing, design and
production of exhibitions and displays.
Policy G14: Build in a budget for maintenance of interpretive media and technology.
H Policies Collections Management
To meet the requirements of Accreditation by Museums Libraries and Archives, Tamworth Castle has to comply with
a number of nationally agreed standards and policies for Collections Management. This includes the production of
its own Collections Care Manual which describes the issues affecting collections and the policies for their care and
enhancement.
There is considerable overlap in the principles for conservation of the Historic Environment and conservation of
collections. Collections Link defines conservation in the context of collections:
‘The management of change to our heritage. It is about minimising and controlling long term risk by understanding and
controlling the way objects are stored, transported and displayed to ensure collections have the best chance of survival
into the future.
Remedial, or interventive conservation, often involves cleaning and stabilising an object and is a painstaking and
sometimes very expensive.
Preventative conservation aims to improve the environment and conditions for an object to keep deterioration to a
minimum. The conservator’s main enemies are changes in humidity, inadequate or unsuitable lighting and dust.’
The Tamworth Castle Collections Care Manual aims to limit the impact of deterioration and decay and addresses the
main agents of decay and deterioration:
• Direct physical force, which includes unnecessary and/or incorrect handling, incorrect mounting
for display, and over cleaning
• Thieves and vandalism
• Fire
• Water
• Pests
• Contaminants such as dust
• Light radiation
• Incorrect temperature
• Incorrect relative humidity
Baseline Position
Tamworth Castle currently has the following in place relating to the care and conservation of collections:
• Piecemeal pest monitoring
• Piecemeal temperature and relative humidity monitoring
• Annual building maintenance review
• Security review of stores
• Lighting control, UV filters on windows in display rooms and black out blinds in stores
• Archival quality storage and packing for around half of the collection, some archive material,
social history collection, costume collection and large objects
• Consolidation of off-site storage in a new purpose designed storage space (April 2010)
108 Part 2 www.marionblockley.co.uk Tamworth Castle Conservation Management Plan