We are a small charity with a big ambition … to redevelop Cromarty Museum.
This exhibition shares our plans for the future, asks you what you enjoy about the museum now, and looks at what happens if we do nothing.
With this project we want to keep telling the story of Cromarty for generations to come. By redeveloping this iconic grade A listed courthouse building and adding a small extension we can:
- make it accessible for everyone to visit
- look after our collections better
- share more stories about Cromarty’s history
- generate enough income to cover our running costs
- develop skills and support our community
Courthouse Timeline
Our Vision
We think this project will cost about £4million and take 5 years.
We hope the redevelopment project will start in 2027. This year we are focused on raising the funds to pay for it. We are applying for grants to pay for this from the Heritage Lottery, Historic Environment Scotland, and foundations who support heritage and community projects.
These drawings are from our feasibility study, they show some of our ideas for the redevelopment. We are excited to add more detail once we have funding for the project.
Bigger than the Courthouse
The project started with the courthouse building, but it has grown into something bigger. This redevelopment is more than just fixing the building, it is about creating a sustainable future for the charity.
The museum is not just about what happened here in the courthouse: it is about the people who have lived and worked in Cromarty and their story within a global history.
We want Cromarty Museum to be about more than just Cromarty. The significance of our town stretches across Cromartyshire (which used to reach from here to Ullapool), the Highlands, Scotland, the UK, and beyond.
Today, Cromarty is significant to people all over the world, from our diaspora community in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA, to the small village called Cromarty in Guyana in the Caribbean.
What happens if we do nothing?
The courthouse will continue to rapidly deteriorate because of the damp. It is getting very close to the point where this iconic building cannot be saved. Normally in buildings the humidity level is 55%. Inside the courthouse today, the humidity is at 90%, despite us removing 40 litres of water with dehumidifiers every day.
Heating the building to just 7 degrees celcius costs us 44% of our annual budget; far more than we can afford and it isn’t anywhere near warm! This extreme damp and cold means it is an unhealthy place for our team to work and the museum collection is rotting.
This painting from our collection shows some of that damage. It will cost us over £17,000 to conserve this painting alone. This matters because we are losing parts of our history and our connection to the generations of people who lived in Cromarty before us.
Community Reflections:
What makes Cromarty unique?
No Redevelopment =
No Cromarty Museum
If we cannot fund this redevelopment project, Cromarty Museum will close. This means that the building will fall into disrepair, and the collection will leave Cromarty for another museum. Our work exploring other homes for the collection in Cromarty showed that there are no sustainable ways to keep the museum collection here in the town.
The charity was forecast to run out of funds in August 2024. We have managed to stay open but it is a struggle every year because of the condition of the building. We are now focusing all our efforts into the redevelopment project, securing the future of the courthouse, and ensuring that the collection stays here in Cromarty for generations to come.
Why is this important?
- Because Cromarty has a unique story to tell that looks far beyond our own doorstep
- Because museums have an outsized impact on the local economy*
- Because this is a nationally significant building
We hope 2027 will be the start of an exciting new chapter for Cromarty Museum.Come back to find out how we get on!
(*Association of Independent Museum’s Economic Impact Report 2025)
