A RACE against time has begun in Shaftesbury as museum volunteers battle to raise £52,000 by the middle of August.

Trustees of the town’s Gold Hill Museum need to raise about £1,000 a day for the next eight weeks to reach their contribution to the £640,000 cost of refurbishing and extending their Grade II listed building.

A two-stage grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund worth £400,000 hangs in the balance, but chair of trustees, Anna McDowell, said failure is not an option.

“We have already got today’s £1,000 thanks to the generosity of the society’s members.

“The fund-raising target is absolutely achievable,” said Mrs McDowell.

But while refusing to think negatively, the trustees’ chair conceded that failure to raise a sufficient amount to trigger the HLF grant would create “a big problem”.

“The building already needs an awful lot of work. One of the walls is bulging away from the floor.

“We have enough money to complete the necessary work, but not all the work,” said Mrs McDowell.

A decision last week by district planners to grant a planning application to extend the museum building at the top of the town’s iconic hill had left trustees’ “ecstatic”.

“I was absolutely amazed, but thrilled. It wasn’t what I expected, but I kept hoping, and we got the decision,” said Mrs McDowell.

Cllr Bill Batty-Smith, the chairman of the North Dorset District Council’s planning committee, said councillors had been impressed by the proposal.

“The officers recommended we refuse the application, but the committee, almost unanimously, took a different view,” said Cllr Batty-Smith.

The replacement of a flat-roofed extension, added to the museum in the 1970s with a two-storey, pitch-roofed structure was considered an improvement, he added.

To support the museum, visit www.goldhillmuseum.org. uk.