The Alfred Gillett Trust has announced plans to build a new museum and archive in Street, the village where the Clarks shoe story began.

The museum, set to open in 2025, will be located at the Grange and feature a collection of museum objects and archive material ranging from 200-million-year-old fossils to 200 years of shoemaking and Clarks shoes.

The Trust has been providing access to this remarkable collection through exhibitions and loans to other museums since it opened in 2012. In 2019, the Trust acquired ownership of the historical collection on the history of Clarks shoes, which paved the way for the new museum.

Rosie Martin, Director of the Alfred Gillett Trust said, "We're delighted that this amazing collection will be open to the public, adding to Somerset's rich and large array of iconic visitor attractions, as well as opening up our gardens for all to enjoy."

The new museum will be a community hub and visitor experience celebrating shoemaking's rich social and industrial history via three new galleries. The first gallery, "Welcome to Street," will explore Street's unique place of innovation, creativity, and international connections.

The second gallery, "Making Shoes," will delve into the incredible work behind making a shoe and the people who made them.

The third gallery, "Buying and Selling," will feature a mass celebration of some of the incredible shoes in the collection and will recreate three different shoe shops from different eras. The museum will also have a space for education and learning, a cafe, and a shop.

The Grade II Listed Grange site will be redeveloped by award-winning architects, Purcell, to reflect the landscape and history of the area. The design engineers, QODA, will ensure that the environmental controls are appropriate for a heritage building, and construction consultants Currie and Brown will serve as project manager and quantity surveyor.

The exhibition and interpretation planners, Nissen Richards Studio, will work with the Trust collections team to create an amazing visitor experience.

The museum will also celebrate the internationally renowned collection of marine reptile fossils in the area, with eighteen near-complete ichthyosaurs and over 180 smaller specimens on permanent display.