Cloverlands Model Car Museum (registered charity no 1198716). Annual Report 2024
The 2024 season in Cloverlands Model Car Museum saw the small team running the museum endeavouring to improve the visitor experience, while planning to continue the overall redevelopment from a ‘collection of collections’ into a proper museum with enhanced educational and enjoyment for visitors. Such major work can only be carried out in the winter ‘off-season’ when the museum is closed to visitors.
Before Cloverlands opened at the end of April for the 2024 operating season alongside its host the Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway (W&LLR – registered charity 1000378), the first phase of the museum redevelopment was successfully completed.
The collection of our founder Gillian Rogers, previously in several locations around the museum, was brought together on two walls, while all the model Formula One cars in the collection were brought together on an opposite wall in new cabinets purchased and constructed following three kind donations from two of the Trustees and a supporter. These cabinets formed the one major item of expenditure made during the year apart from the necessary annual insurance renewal.
The presence of these cabinets has seen us progress the ’Wall of Formula One’ programme – a long-term project to display one example of every car that has competed in the F1 World Championship since it began in 1950. This currently comprises just over 1,000 cars, though it increases by 10 each year – at the end of 2024 the museum had around 400 F1 models.
The original intention had been to at least begin phase two of the project in the winter 2024-25 period – this would involve reorganising the displays in the centre of the museum to enable easier and more effective interpretation, with more informative displays such as the story of motoring in models and the rise and fall of the British diecast model.
However circumstances changed our plans when the W&LLR decided it needed to turn half of a room alongside the museum into more office space. We were offered the other half as extra display space, with an agreement that the Cloverlands team built the dividing walls – this occupied us to the end of 2024. Further delays would follow, but these are outside the scope of this report.
Finances have continued to greatly occupy the Cloverlands team. All volunteer organisations have seen declining donations and this continued to be the situation in 2024, providing us with very limited funds for developments. Until we can make these developments and provide a much better museum experience for the visitor we are unlikely to be successful with any applications to grantfunding bodies.
Also affecting our financial position was the continuing difficulty in transferring our bank accounts to new signatories following the retirement of the previous chairman. Remarkably this situation would persist well into 2025 before being resolved.
The other major issue remained attracting more volunteers to assist with running the museum, and we remain a very small team. We were very pleased to welcome back former trustee Ben Walters as a regular volunteer in 2024. We have also worked more closely with the W&LLR’s own Connections Visitor Centre which one passes through to get to Cloverlands – volunteers from the two organisations now routinely work together to act as stewards to each other’s collections.
At the very end of 2024 we were rocked by the unexpected passing of our trustee Max Tomlinson. As well as being the husband of our founder Gillian Rogers when she passed in 2021, Max was one of the museum’s most regular and prolific volunteers and his loss would be keenly felt in 2025.
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Donations of models to the museum continued to be made throughout the year though we carefully scrutinised each offer to ensure we did not accept models that we could make use of. At the very end of the year we were offered a remarkable collection of model cars that featured in the James Bond films, together with several items of movie memorabilia. We planned to install this display during 2025, feeling that with the correct promotion it will prove attractive in its own right, especially to fans of the films and not just to visitors who like model cars.
Also at the end of 2024 the W&LLR secured a grant of up to £410,000 from a Community Ownership Fund established by the previous Conservative Government, to carry out major refurbishment of its three-bay industrial unit, the first bay of which houses both Cloverlands and Connections.
This work would include replacing the life-expired roof and the cladding of all the exterior walls, followed by a second phase that would see interior refurbishment including the installation of a community space. At the very least the museums would gain a much more prominent and visitorfriendly entrance, but there was also the tantalising possibility of more display space being gained.
However the conditions of the grant would require the exterior work to be completed by December 2025 in order to secure the funding, and while the work was underway there could be no access to the site. Therefore the Cloverlands team ended 2024 in the knowledge that 2025 was likely to be a more difficult and potentially truncated year, with our plans to progress the museum likely having to be revised depending on the circumstances and potential opportunities we were provided with.
Cloverlands Model Car Museum
Year to 31 December 2024
(Reg. Charity 1198716)
Receipts and Expenditure Account
| Funds bought forward Receipts Donations Bank interest Specific donations Expenses Refurbishment – new cabinets Insurance Bank charges Excess of receipts over expenditure Funds carried forward Represented by: West Bromwich Building Society Unity Trust Bank Notes: for Charity Commission Annual Receipts Annual Expenditure |
£ £ 2269 1691.15 20.95 600.00 2312.10 1371.86 1059.04 93.65 2524.55 -212.45 -212.45 2269.00 2056.55 1197.51 859.04 2312.10 2524.55 |
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A Charman ……… Chair, Cloverlands 25[th] October 2025