Test Valley would put in £100,000 and the town council £50,000 to keep Andover Museum and the Museum of the Iron Age open to March 2029. Both vote this month.

Two councils are being asked to put £150,000 between them into Andover Museum and the Museum of the Iron Age, to keep the doors open until March 2029. (Test Valley Borough Council, 3 September 2026)

Hampshire Cultural Trust, which runs the museum, asked for a combined package. The split proposed is:

  • Test Valley Borough Council: £100,000
  • Andover Town Council: £50,000

Neither figure is agreed yet. Andover Town Council votes on Wednesday 9 September. Test Valley’s Cabinet votes on Wednesday 23 September.

How the £150,000 for Andover Museum would be split, and when it is decided

What the council’s own release does not say

The press release describes “fears it could close without long-term funding”. The minutes of Andover Town Council’s July meeting are blunter, and they are the better record of how this got here.

The motion that started it was proposed by Councillor L Gregori and seconded by Councillor T Burley. It recorded that Hampshire County Council cuts to the trust, and the absence of any direct borough funding, “have led to serious consideration by HCT of options which involve closure of the Andover Museum”. (Andover Town Council, draft minutes, 8 July 2026)

The same debate put several facts on the record that have not appeared since:

  • The building is owned by Hampshire County Council and leased to Hampshire Cultural Trust on a long-term peppercorn lease.
  • It is not fully utilised, and making better use of the space would need investment.
  • Moving the museum has been looked at before, including during the town centre masterplan work, and is “not currently financially viable”.
  • Test Valley Borough Council, “unlike some other councils, does not make any direct financial contributions to their local museum”.

Councillors voted unanimously to give the town clerk authority to investigate funding mechanisms and report back. That report is the item they will vote on next week.

The closure risk is documented, and it goes back to 2024

Andover Museum was named in Hampshire County Council’s own Future Services consultation in 2024. The proposal was to cut the annual grant to Hampshire Cultural Trust by £600,000, from a total of £2.5 million, by April 2027. (Hampshire County Council, proposals relating to Hampshire Cultural Trust)

The county’s published insight summary is explicit about what that would mean. It measured disagreement among people who had visited a trust venue in the previous six months. The two highest scores were:

  • Ashcroft Arts Centre, Fareham: 84% disagreed
  • Andover Museum and the Museum of the Iron Age: 81% disagreed

The county’s own wording follows those numbers: “These venues have been earmarked for possible closure if such measures become necessary.”

The consultation drew 3,988 responses on that proposal alone, of which 248 respondents had visited Andover Museum in the previous six months. (Hampshire County Council, insight summary)

The museum is already open three days a week

The pressure is visible on the trust’s own booking page. For the week ahead it shows Andover Museum and the Museum of the Iron Age open Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 10am to 4pm, and closed Monday to Thursday. (Hampshire Cultural Trust, Museum of the Iron Age)

What is inside is not a local curiosity. The Museum of the Iron Age tells the story of Danebury hillfort, south west of Andover, excavated by Professor Barry Cunliffe between 1969 and 1988 and one of the best-studied Iron Age sites in Britain. The building also holds the Fullerton Mosaic, a Romano-British floor found in 1872 and installed at the museum in 2009 after a Heritage Lottery Fund purchase. The house itself is Grade II listed, a Georgian townhouse given to Andover Grammar School by the philanthropist Martha Gale in the 1840s.

What the money buys, and what it does not

The funding would run to March 2029, through local government reorganisation. When the package was announced, Test Valley Borough Council was due to be abolished in 2028, and the money is explicitly time-limited to cover that transition. Update, 11 September 2026: the government withdrew the Hampshire reorganisation decision on 7 September, so the transition the funding was framed around is no longer scheduled.

The council’s stated purpose is to give the trust time “to explore more financially resilient and sustainable service delivery options and operating models” with the new unitary authority and the town council. If it is agreed, the two councils will meet the trust regularly over the two and a half years.

In other words, this is a bridge, not a settlement. Nothing published so far commits anyone to funding the museum beyond March 2029.

One report is missing

Andover Town Council’s agenda lists the museum as item 15, “Preserving our cultural and heritage assets: The Andover Museum”, and marks the report itself “(to follow)”. Every other report for that meeting is published and downloadable. (Andover Town Council, Full Council agenda, 9 September 2026)

So the resolutions councillors are being asked to approve, including the conditions attached to £50,000 of public money, were not in the public domain when the agenda was signed on 3 September.

What it means for you

Both votes are in public, and item 15 is not in the exempt part of the town council meeting.

  • Andover Town Council, Full Council: Wednesday 9 September, 6.30pm, the Upper Guildhall, High Street, Andover. Item 1 is a public question session.
  • Test Valley Borough Council, Cabinet: Wednesday 23 September, 5.30pm. Note the venue is Crosfield Hall in Romsey, not Beech Hurst, and the agenda is published in the week before the meeting.

If you want to make the case for the museum, the town council’s public session at the start of the meeting is the point at which residents can speak.

The museum is at 6 Church Close, Andover, SP10 1DP, a few minutes from the High Street. Our parking guide covers the nearest car parks, and things to do in Andover lists what else is open.

Sources