MATTER OF TRUST

THE decision to allow Nottinghamshire County Council to lease Newark’s Gilstrap Centre and use it as a register office is difficult to understand.

We keep hearing that Newark needs to make more of its undoubted tourism potential, and the new Civil War museum will certainly help it to do just that.

The Gilstrap Centre is ideally placed in the grounds of Newark Castle.

It is a perfect location from which to relay tourism information about what the town and surrounding area has to offer, and that would include the new museum.

The county council’s register office proposal will mean public access will be lost, contradicting the original idea of benefactor Sir William Gilstrap that the building should be for public use — it was, after all, built as a public library.

Then there is the small matter of public opinion.

Almost 3,500 signatures on a petition calling for the building to remain open to the public failed to sway the district council’s general purposes committee, whose members were meeting as trustees of the Gilstrap Charity.

A detailed business plan drawn up by public spirited campaigners, designed to show that the Glstrap Centre could be self-sufficient, also failed to cut any ice.

The campaigners are unhappy with the way the whole issue has been dealt with, but they are not giving up the fight.

They are surely the sort of people Sir William would have trusted with his vision for the building.