THE team at Tavistock Museum has announced that last year’s poor summer weather led to a ‘significant downturn’ in visitor numbers.

The museum’s management committee announced in their annual spring report that visitor numbers had dropped from 8,213 in 2016 to 7,097 in 2017. The committee attributed this to poor summer weather and a perceived drop in tourists due to the ‘proliferation of scaffolding’ present on Tavistock’s high street last summer.

Despite the drop in visitor numbers, the museum committee declared the 2017 season a success. The exhibitions run commemmorated the bi-centenary of Tavistock Canal, looked back at the Liberator air crash on Plasterdown in the Second World War and showed off the paintings of Tamar Valley fruit grower Richard Woollcombe.

In their report, the museum paid tribute to Graham Kirkpatrick and Margaret Blowey, two stewards and stalwards of the museum who have both died in the last 12 months.

The main exhibitions this year will be ‘100 years of motor buses in Tavistock’ an ‘Ronald Gard — A hero of the great escape’.