News & Events

Heritage Centre News
KHC VISION and DEVELOPMENT PLAN In many of the posts I create here on the website I make reference to the ‘Vision’ that we have for the Kegworth Heritage Centre. I’ve spent the past forty years working either directly for big corporations or consulting with them. I’ve even written Vision and Mission Statements for some of them. But when I talk about the Vision for KHC, I’m talking about much more than a few glib phrases that employees struggle to remember and certainly can’t often relate to. When I joined the board of trustees in 2018 one of the first things I was given was a copy of the new KHC Development Plan, which was written by John Billett, our treasurer then and now. I was impressed with both the depth and breadth of the concept but at the same time, a little concerned by its ambition. We’ve been through a few iterations of the plan since then, and I’m amazed at how much we’ve achieved. Even more so, given that we have spent two years in a global pandemic and have seen our staffing levels reduced to three trustees, with a little support from their partners and friends. But, back to the vision. I’ve created a summary which you can look at and download to share with other people. I’d like to think that some of the ideas resonate with you, like they did with me, and that you might be tempted to put your hands up and be counted. Just like I was. I’m going to go even further, and put my money where my mouth is. We still have to make some significant capital expenditure on some infrastructure work but this would wipe out most of our funds. We are applying for grants but this is time consuming and with no guarantee of success. So I have committed to making the money available to KHC from my own funds. Not only will this enable the work to proceed without undue delay, it will also demonstrate the commitment of the board to potential donors and grant awarding bodies. Last month, we launched our campaign to start rebuilding our volunteer base with some Facebook posts linking to the website, which have largely fallen on deaf ears. (Since I first drafted this, we have had two people expressing an interest to join us!) We need to accelerate and boost this effort, because, quite frankly, we can do almost nothing without a group of willing and committed people to help us. Any help is welcome. Even an hour or two a week. We need some people to start the ball rolling and to build up a core group of people who can move us forward to start to realise our vision. There is a real risk that once the current group of trustees can no longer support KHC it will simply close and be lost forever. More job adverts will appear in the next few weeks for very specific roles where the board doesn’t have the necessary expertise. We’re going to ramp up the campaign with some new ideas and opportunities to interact with us, so please keep an eye open and help us where you can. Even if it’s just to pass on the information to someone you know who might be interested. Right now, enthusiasm and willingness to help are far more important than anything else. There is a huge amount of work to do, but every pair of hands and every hour will make it easier and get us closer to being able to do the really fun stuff - which is to make Kegworth Heritage Centre a focal point for our community. We’re not content with being a museum. And closing down permanently is not an option! Ally Gill, Acting Chair KHC, Prague - August 30th, 2022 You may be wondering whatever happened to Kegworth Heritage Centre (formerly Kegworth Museum). It's been closed so long. Does it still exist? Will it ever open again? To answer these questions I’d like to give you a long overdue update on what’s happening at the KHC, and apologise that it has taken so long. Tempus fugit, or more accurately as it appears in Virgil’s original text “fugit inreparabile tempus” which literally translates to “it escapes; irretrievable time”. 2022 is the 30th Anniversary of Kegworth Heritage Centre, although the seeds for its creation were sown over 50 years ago in 1971 when the Kegworth Village Association was formed. The current Trustees have been thinking about how we could celebrate this wonderful milestone for over three years. Time hasn’t been on our side and we irretrievably lost most of the last two years, in common with Heritage Centres and Museums all over the country, and across the world. Even the biggest and best supported museums have shared the pain of being unable to open and watching their funds deteriorate and their volunteers leave. At our January Trustee meeting, our focus was on committing to reopen the museum this year. Before you start thinking that all we have to do is open the front door and invite you in, let me assure you that it isn’t as simple as that. Following on from the extensive building work that took place between 2018-20, the collection is still in disarray and needs extensive TLC. When the new heating was installed, it revealed issues with the electrical wiring which we need to resolve but which is likely to cost in the region of £11,000 for us to make it future proof. The wiring is adequate and is not a risk to buildings or people but it is not good enough for us to go ahead with our plans to reimagine the way the collection is presented and the way we want to be able to interact with the community as a genuine Heritage Centre, not just a static collection of museum pieces. Currently our focus is on making the museum safe for people to work in. It’s easy to joke about Health and Safety when it is someone else’s responsibility but when we, as trustees, potentially become personally liable, we have to make sure we are operating within the margins of safety and the law and not outside them. Until we are certain that we have the right governance and standards in place to ensure both volunteer and visitor safety we cannot reopen. The good news is that we have rewritten almost all of the operational documents that are legally required along with those that are considered to be part of good governance by the Charity Commission and other heritage advisory boards. At the same time, Diane and Katie have done a lot of work in decluttering and reorganising much of the collection but there is still along way to go. It is a slow process, partly because we have a chicken and egg situation, where we need certain things in place to move forward but our financial circumstances are forcing us into spend time looking at fundraising opportunities to raise the money to make the changes we need. One significant activity in this area is that we are actively moving to become an accredited museum (again). This will enable us to tap into grants and funding that is currently restricted and we are working with the Museum Development East Midlands organisation to realise this. We’ve recently made some changes to help streamline our decision making process. Now the pandemic restrictions have been lifted and people have gone back to work, it can be difficult to get everyone together to make decisions as expected by our constitution. This isn’t helped by the geographical distribution of the trustees - one still in Prague, one working shifts on a rig in the North Sea, another going through both a home change and starting a new job, leaving only one trustee active in the village. The new (temporary) change will enable certain types of decision to be made more quickly and without a formal board meeting but ensuring that due diligence is observed and the necessary checks and balances remain in place. This has been facilitated by a grant from Kegworth Parish Council through which we finally have a server that can be accessed remotely as well as our own dedicated Microsoft Teams environment. After so much frustration over the last three years, all the many different pieces of the puzzle are finally beginning to fit together. We have a plan that is flexible and adaptable to unexpected changes in requirements and priorities. I am confident that we shall be starting to actively recruit for volunteers very shortly, not just to help with reopening the centre, but in new and specific roles that have never been offered before. We want to go beyond the idea that volunteers act as stewards on opening days but start to help us in reimagining the whole concept of the role of the heritage centre in Kegworth and what it can offer. Please bear with us for a little bit longer! Ally Gill, Acting Chair KHC, Prague - May 11th 2022 KHC SUPPORT FOR QUERIES ABOUT KEGWORTH FAMILIES AND PLACES For many years KHC has been able to provide a limited amount of support helping people with queries about families and places of interest in the village. We know that people have found this both useful and valuable and it is a service that we wish to continue to provide. For the time being, we regret that we must temporarily withdraw this support. The reasons for this are: Much of the information is stored in physical archives within the museum and as a result of the continued disruption caused by the refurbishment these archives are not as accessible as previously As KHC Trustees, our highest priority is to get the museum up and running and reopened. Because there are so few of us we need to have all-hands dedicated to this activity Our existing mechanism for accepting such requests and other support information has been overrun by spammers and we need to rethink the way we operate the feedback/support system. To that end, the feedback and mailing options previously available on this site have temporarily been disabled Once we are operational again, please be assured that we will resume this service as it is an integral part of our vision. Until then, the Kegworth Remembered (a partnership with Kegworth Heritage Centre) Facebook group is an incredibly knowledgeable and helpful source of information and someone in that community may well be able to help you out! Thank you for understanding. Welcome to our new KHC Trustee The best definition of serendipity is a “happy accident” but serendipity is not something we’re too accustomed to at Kegworth Heritage Centre. Usually our surprises are big, expensive, involve huge amounts of physical labour and force us to close the museum doors. This week I’m absolutely thrilled to welcome a new person onto the team who was introduced to us through a happy accident. I don’t need to go into the details but I’m delighted to introduce Katie Christian who joined the KHC Management Committee as a trustee last Friday. Katie is an independent Sales and Marketing professional with a huge amount of experience in the hospitality sector. She has worked for Best Western (Yew Lodge), Millennium Hotels and Resorts, Hallmark Hotels and Drayton Manor Park. If that part of her resumé isn’t impressive enough, what we’re really excited about is Katie’s experience working for English Heritage in Derbyshire, specifically at Bolsover Castle. Katie is from Chesterfield but is a regular visitor to Kegworth. We’ve already been super-impressed by her ideas and suggestions especially as she is seeing the Heritage Centre from a completely new perspective. I only hope we can keep up with her! This weekend we have moved our web hosting services from 123Reg to Krystal. From a user perspective, you shouldn't notice any differences (although the web access may be faster) but it makes a big difference behind the scenes. Although both companies are UK based (important to us) there have been problems with support, costs and flexibility of the old service. Krystal offers a cheaper, more flexible and extendable solution out of the box and their customer support is excellent. In fact, Krystal was able to offer us their basic package (which meets all our current needs) at no cost because of our charity status! Hopefully, everything should be up and running by the time you see this, but if you notice any glitches please let us know by sending us a message. Our last big infrastructure investment for the Kegworth Heritage Centre was installed yesterday (Saturday 18th July) and we now have a ‘state of the art’ (relatively speaking) heating system in place. Along with the new floors and windows, this completes the trio of big building projects the Trustees had targeted to deliver since they took over the watch in 2018. It’s taken quite a long time to complete the work but hard work and patience has paid off. The initial work on the floor showed much bigger problems than we were first aware of which delayed the remainder of the plan. But the boost in funding from the Michael Bishop foundation and other sources at least gave us the ability to budget for the additional improvements. Even putting the new window in place was delayed because of planning issues that were not previously a problem, and it’s taken a while to finalise the heating because of the lockdown and getting the experts in to do the necessary surveys. We also had a difficult decision to make in choosing the most appropriate heating system, especially given the costs involved. Greenvision Energy have been very supportive throughout our discussions and eventually we chose them to supply the Dimplex Quantum RR system using a mixture of storage heaters and radiators. These can be controlled from the HC directly or remotely. With the sealed flooring and the new double glazed windows we should be much more energy efficient which will then help reduce our on-going operating costs. Click on any photo below to launch and browse the gallery. As mentioned in the last update, the work to replace the ground floor of the Heritage Centre finally began on the 26th December. A local Kegworth firm, Brothers Building Contractors, started the laborious process of digging up the existing concrete, wood and some other interesting organic material, ready to replace it with a new stone sub-base, insulation, damp proof membrane and a final layer of concrete. We are now looking at quotes for a new purpose designed floor covering which is to withstand the pitter patter of many tiny feet, as well as provide a suitable barrier between the concrete and the collection. The Heritage Centre will remain closed and out of bounds to non-building personnel) for the immediate future. The trustees are especially grateful for the assistance provided by Geoff Powell in helping get the site ready for the builders to start - neither a pleasant or trivial task as it turned out! Click on any photo below to launch and browse the gallery. The long awaited building work to replace the downstairs floor is scheduled to start on November 26th. This has been the highest priority for the trustees and the biggest obstacle in being able to reopen Kegworth Heritage Centre on a regular basis. We are delighted that the work will be completed this year and enable us to start thinking about the future on a more stable footing! The Annual Ghost Walk proved as popular as ever this year. In the end 20 people attended. Some extra fun was provided by members of Kegworth Young Players Association who braved the elements to play the spooks. DID YOU KNOW? Kegworth Heritage Centre can assist you in tracing your family history. We have many records, including Churchyard plans. (This only applies to local families - if you originate from Ulan Bator or even Leicester, you're on your own!) Use this form to contact us for further information Many of you will be aware of our partnership with the Kegworth Remembered Group on Facebook. The group is administered by one of our trustees, Phil Stevens, and contains over a thousand photographs of Kegworth people and events going back through the generations. Some of the photos are from the museum, but most have been submitted by Kegworth people and are of their families, friends, events and memories.

Heritage Centre News

KHC VISION and DEVELOPMENT PLAN

In many of the posts I create here on the website I make reference to the ‘Vision’ that we have for the Kegworth Heritage Centre. I’ve spent the past forty years working either directly for big corporations or consulting with them. I’ve even written Vision and Mission Statements for some of them. But when I talk about the Vision for KHC, I’m talking about much more than a few glib phrases that employees struggle to remember and certainly can’t often relate to.

When I joined the board of trustees in 2018 one of the first things I was given was a copy of the new KHC Development Plan, which was written by John Billett, our treasurer then and now. I was impressed with both the depth and breadth of the concept but at the same time, a little concerned by its ambition. We’ve been through a few iterations of the plan since then, and I’m amazed at how much we’ve achieved. Even more so, given that we have spent two years in a global pandemic and have seen our staffing levels reduced to three trustees, with a little support from their partners and friends.

But, back to the vision. I’ve created a summary which you can look at and download to share with other people. I’d like to think that some of the ideas resonate with you, like they did with me, and that you might be tempted to put your hands up and be counted. Just like I was. I’m going to go even further, and put my money where my mouth is. We still have to make some significant capital expenditure on some infrastructure work but this would wipe out most of our funds. We are applying for grants but this is time consuming and with no guarantee of success. So I have committed to making the money available to KHC from my own funds. Not only will this enable the work to proceed without undue delay, it will also demonstrate the commitment of the board to potential donors and grant awarding bodies.

Last month, we launched our campaign to start rebuilding our volunteer base with some Facebook posts linking to the website, which have largely fallen on deaf ears. (Since I first drafted this, we have had two people expressing an interest to join us!) We need to accelerate and boost this effort, because, quite frankly, we can do almost nothing without a group of willing and committed people to help us. Any help is welcome. Even an hour or two a week. We need some people to start the ball rolling and to build up a core group of people who can move us forward to start to realise our vision. There is a real risk that once the current group of trustees can no longer support KHC it will simply close and be lost forever.

More job adverts will appear in the next few weeks for very specific roles where the board doesn’t have the necessary expertise. We’re going to ramp up the campaign with some new ideas and opportunities to interact with us, so please keep an eye open and help us where you can. Even if it’s just to pass on the information to someone you know who might be interested. Right now, enthusiasm and willingness to help are far more important than anything else. There is a huge amount of work to do, but every pair of hands and every hour will make it easier and get us closer to being able to do the really fun stuff - which is to make Kegworth Heritage Centre a focal point for our community. We’re not content with being a museum. And closing down permanently is not an option!

Ally Gill, Acting Chair KHC,
Prague - August 30th, 2022

You may be wondering whatever happened to Kegworth Heritage Centre (formerly Kegworth Museum). It's been closed so long. Does it still exist? Will it ever open again?

To answer these questions I’d like to give you a long overdue update on what’s happening at the KHC, and apologise that it has taken so long.

Tempus fugit, or more accurately as it appears in Virgil’s original text “fugit inreparabile tempus” which literally translates to “it escapes; irretrievable time”. 2022 is the 30th Anniversary of Kegworth Heritage Centre, although the seeds for its creation were sown over 50 years ago in 1971 when the Kegworth Village Association was formed. The current Trustees have been thinking about how we could celebrate this wonderful milestone for over three years. Time hasn’t been on our side and we irretrievably lost most of the last two years, in common with Heritage Centres and Museums all over the country, and across the world. Even the biggest and best supported museums have shared the pain of being unable to open and watching their funds deteriorate and their volunteers leave.

At our January Trustee meeting, our focus was on committing to reopen the museum this year. Before you start thinking that all we have to do is open the front door and invite you in, let me assure you that it isn’t as simple as that. Following on from the extensive building work that took place between 2018-20, the collection is still in disarray and needs extensive TLC. When the new heating was installed, it revealed issues with the electrical wiring which we need to resolve but which is likely to cost in the region of £11,000 for us to make it future proof. The wiring is adequate and is not a risk to buildings or people but it is not good enough for us to go ahead with our plans to reimagine the way the collection is presented and the way we want to be able to interact with the community as a genuine Heritage Centre, not just a static collection of museum pieces.

Currently our focus is on making the museum safe for people to work in. It’s easy to joke about Health and Safety when it is someone else’s responsibility but when we, as trustees, potentially become personally liable, we have to make sure we are operating within the margins of safety and the law and not outside them. Until we are certain that we have the right governance and standards in place to ensure both volunteer and visitor safety we cannot reopen.

The good news is that we have rewritten almost all of the operational documents that are legally required along with those that are considered to be part of good governance by the Charity Commission and other heritage advisory boards. At the same time, Diane and Katie have done a lot of work in decluttering and reorganising much of the collection but there is still along way to go.

It is a slow process, partly because we have a chicken and egg situation, where we need certain things in place to move forward but our financial circumstances are forcing us into spend time looking at fundraising opportunities to raise the money to make the changes we need. One significant activity in this area is that we are actively moving to become an accredited museum (again). This will enable us to tap into grants and funding that is currently restricted and we are working with the Museum Development East Midlands organisation to realise this.

We’ve recently made some changes to help streamline our decision making process. Now the pandemic restrictions have been lifted and people have gone back to work, it can be difficult to get everyone together to make decisions as expected by our constitution. This isn’t helped by the geographical distribution of the trustees - one still in Prague, one working shifts on a rig in the North Sea, another going through both a home change and starting a new job, leaving only one trustee active in the village. The new (temporary) change will enable certain types of decision to be made more quickly and without a formal board meeting but ensuring that due diligence is observed and the necessary checks and balances remain in place. This has been facilitated by a grant from Kegworth Parish Council through which we finally have a server that can be accessed remotely as well as our own dedicated Microsoft Teams environment.

After so much frustration over the last three years, all the many different pieces of the puzzle are finally beginning to fit together. We have a plan that is flexible and adaptable to unexpected changes in requirements and priorities. I am confident that we shall be starting to actively recruit for volunteers very shortly, not just to help with reopening the centre, but in new and specific roles that have never been offered before. We want to go beyond the idea that volunteers act as stewards on opening days but start to help us in reimagining the whole concept of the role of the heritage centre in Kegworth and what it can offer.

Please bear with us for a little bit longer!

Ally Gill, Acting Chair KHC,
Prague - May 11th 2022

KHC SUPPORT FOR QUERIES ABOUT KEGWORTH FAMILIES AND PLACES

For many years KHC has been able to provide a limited amount of support helping people with queries about families and places of interest in the village. We know that people have found this both useful and valuable and it is a service that we wish to continue to provide.

For the time being, we regret that we must temporarily withdraw this support. The reasons for this are:

Much of the information is stored in physical archives within the museum and as a result of the continued disruption caused by the refurbishment these archives are not as accessible as previously

As KHC Trustees, our highest priority is to get the museum up and running and reopened. Because there are so few of us we need to have all-hands dedicated to this activity

Our existing mechanism for accepting such requests and other support information has been overrun by spammers and we need to rethink the way we operate the feedback/support system. To that end, the feedback and mailing options previously available on this site have temporarily been disabled

Once we are operational again, please be assured that we will resume this service as it is an integral part of our vision. Until then, the Kegworth Remembered (a partnership with Kegworth Heritage Centre) Facebook group is an incredibly knowledgeable and helpful source of information and someone in that community may well be able to help you out!

Thank you for understanding.

Welcome to our new KHC Trustee

The best definition of serendipity is a “happy accident” but serendipity is not something we’re too accustomed to at Kegworth Heritage Centre. Usually our surprises are big, expensive, involve huge amounts of physical labour and force us to close the museum doors.

This week I’m absolutely thrilled to welcome a new person onto the team who was introduced to us through a happy accident. I don’t need to go into the details but I’m delighted to introduce Katie Christian who joined the KHC Management Committee as a trustee last Friday.

Katie is an independent Sales and Marketing professional with a huge amount of experience in the hospitality sector. She has worked for Best Western (Yew Lodge), Millennium Hotels and Resorts, Hallmark Hotels and Drayton Manor Park. If that part of her resumé isn’t impressive enough, what we’re really excited about is Katie’s experience working for English Heritage in Derbyshire, specifically at Bolsover Castle.

Katie is from Chesterfield but is a regular visitor to Kegworth. We’ve already been super-impressed by her ideas and suggestions especially as she is seeing the Heritage Centre from a completely new perspective. I only hope we can keep up with her!

This weekend we have moved our web hosting services from 123Reg to Krystal. From a user perspective, you shouldn't notice any differences (although the web access may be faster) but it makes a big difference behind the scenes.

Although both companies are UK based (important to us) there have been problems with support, costs and flexibility of the old service. Krystal offers a cheaper, more flexible and extendable solution out of the box and their customer support is excellent. In fact, Krystal was able to offer us their basic package (which meets all our current needs) at no cost because of our charity status!

Hopefully, everything should be up and running by the time you see this, but if you notice any glitches please let us know by sending us a message.

Our last big infrastructure investment for the Kegworth Heritage Centre was installed yesterday (Saturday 18th July) and we now have a ‘state of the art’ (relatively speaking) heating system in place. Along with the new floors and windows, this completes the trio of big building projects the Trustees had targeted to deliver since they took over the watch in 2018.

It’s taken quite a long time to complete the work but hard work and patience has paid off. The initial work on the floor showed much bigger problems than we were first aware of which delayed the remainder of the plan. But the boost in funding from the Michael Bishop foundation and other sources at least gave us the ability to budget for the additional improvements. Even putting the new window in place was delayed because of planning issues that were not previously a problem, and it’s taken a while to finalise the heating because of the lockdown and getting the experts in to do the necessary surveys. We also had a difficult decision to make in choosing the most appropriate heating system, especially given the costs involved.

Greenvision Energy have been very supportive throughout our discussions and eventually we chose them to supply the Dimplex Quantum RR system using a mixture of storage heaters and radiators. These can be controlled from the HC directly or remotely. With the sealed flooring and the new double glazed windows we should be much more energy efficient which will then help reduce our on-going operating costs.

Click on any photo below to launch and browse the gallery.

As mentioned in the last update, the work to replace the ground floor of the Heritage Centre finally began on the 26th December. A local Kegworth firm, Brothers Building Contractors, started the laborious process of digging up the existing concrete, wood and some other interesting organic material, ready to replace it with a new stone sub-base, insulation, damp proof membrane and a final layer of concrete.

We are now looking at quotes for a new purpose designed floor covering which is to withstand the pitter patter of many tiny feet, as well as provide a suitable barrier between the concrete and the collection. The Heritage Centre will remain closed and out of bounds to non-building personnel) for the immediate future.

The trustees are especially grateful for the assistance provided by Geoff Powell in helping get the site ready for the builders to start - neither a pleasant or trivial task as it turned out!

Click on any photo below to launch and browse the gallery.

The long awaited building work to replace the downstairs floor is scheduled to start on November 26th. This has been the highest priority for the trustees and the biggest obstacle in being able to reopen Kegworth Heritage Centre on a regular basis. We are delighted that the work will be completed this year and enable us to start thinking about the future on a more stable footing!

The Annual Ghost Walk proved as popular as ever this year. In the end 20 people attended. Some extra fun was provided by members of Kegworth Young Players Association who braved the elements to play the spooks.

DID YOU KNOW? Kegworth Heritage Centre can assist you in tracing your family history. We have many records, including Churchyard plans. (This only applies to local families - if you originate from Ulan Bator or even Leicester, you're on your own!)

Use this form to contact us for further information

Many of you will be aware of our partnership with the Kegworth Remembered Group on Facebook. The group is administered by one of our trustees, Phil Stevens, and contains over a thousand photographs of Kegworth people and events going back through the generations. Some of the photos are from the museum, but most have been submitted by Kegworth people and are of their families, friends, events and memories.

Past Events

EVENT	DATE	DESCRIPTION
KHC Annual General Meeting	October 5	The KHC Annual General Meeting
KHC Annual Big Village Walk	August 11	The KHC Annual Big Village Walk
KHC Ghost walk	October 26	The traditional annual Haunted Kegworth walk.
Hello, Heritage	October 16	KHC Special opening as part of the NW Leicestershire Hello Heritage season. Open from 10:00 until 15:30 with a talk on The History of Photography and Photography in Kegworth starting at 13:00
Hello, Heritage	October 15	KHC Special opening as part of the NW Leicestershire Hello Heritage season. Open from 10:00 until 15:30. Poetry workshop for children from 10:30 until 12:30.