History graduate and museum volunteer Anna Buick sprucing up the village shop display for the seasonal re-opening at Wymondham museum.

A Norfolk museum that was on the brink of closure reopened for the summer months today and its committee is hopeful it will have a much brighter future.

The Grade II listed Wymondham Heritage Museum, based at the town’s Bridewell, will be open from Monday to Saturday until November and has introduced a number of new exhibitions about the town’s history.

And the committee’s chairman Pip Woodward was more optimistic about the future compared to the start of last year when falling visitor numbers and rising costs meant the museum had been losing £7,000 each year.

However, he said since then a number of fundraising initiatives had helped to turn the £7,000 loss into an £8,000 profit, including book sales and other events, while Eric Thorburn, president of the Wymondham Heritage Society contacted businesses in the town to secure sponsorship. “We are much healthier than we were.

“The projections for the future are that we are in a much better position than we were, but we can’t get complacent,” Mr Woodward said.

New exhibitions include Wymondham, Past, Present and a Possible Future which traces the development of the town from Domesday to the present day and Portrait of a Norfolk Village, about neighbouring Morley.

There is also an exhibition on Ethel Gooch, the first woman to chair the local council.

A number of local dignitaries attended the opening of the museum, including Wymondham mayor Robert Savage and South Norfolk councillor Joe Mooney.