Angling Collection Trust is the official name of what in common parlance we call the National Angling Museum. When charitable status is received, as I am sure it will in due course, the name may change again, but the important point to realise at the moment is that this organisation is a non-profit-making angler’s museum.
Just recently I have donated my angling magazine collection to the museum, free of charge. This collection goes back to the 1950s, comprises over 30 titles of which 16 are complete journal runs (eg. Reel, Angling, Coarse Angler, etc. etc.). I hope it will form the basis of the magazine/journal section of the museum library. We already have a generous donation of angling books so the book section of the library is on the way too.
The handover of my magazine collection was no small matter. Steve Griffiths (of British Waterways) and Jonathan Ward-Allen (of Waterlog), both prime movers in the museum, met me on the M25 after a meeting and we filled Steve’s huge estate wagon with half my collection.
On a subsequent day Steve drove over to Cambridge and once again we filled his vehicle to the brim, but on this occasion the very last box was squeezed in successfully. I reckon the whole collection, boxed up, came to three cubic metres! Just pace that out and you’ll see what a volume it is.
So where are they now? In the Brat Museum at Ellesmere Port where the angling museum has both a display and a storage area. The angling magazines are currently in storage preparatory to placing them in order, and by year, in appropriate paper-friendly box files. The other site of the museum is by the mere in Ellesmere, but this has yet to be developed. The plan is to continue the caf
