Great Yarmouth Nelson museum to become gallery and home

The Nelson Museum building in South Quay, Great Yarmouth, which was most recently open as the Yare Gallery, will be given a new lease of life through the development.

The ground floor will remain as an art gallery with a café while the first and second floors will be transformed into a home.

HMS Victory, the warship Horatio Nelson sailed at the Battle of Trafalgar, which is now docked in Portsmouth (Image: Newsquest)

The plans also include creating two artist studios in the museum courtyard.

Great Yarmouth Borough Council’s development committee members approved the scheme this week.

Inside the former Nelson Museum before it shut in 2019 (Image: Newsquest)

Noel Galer, a Conservative councillor who sits on the committee, said: “While many in the town enjoyed having the museum there, if it is not popular then we have to think of otherways to make good use of the building. 

“Keeping it occupied will prevent this listed building from becoming run down and will keep it maintained for the future.”

A portrait of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson (Image: Norfolk Museums Service)

Members also celebrate that it will be kept as an art gallery, which will help draw visitors to this historic part of the town.

The former Nelson Museum is a Grade II listed building that forms part of the Great Yarmouth Row Houses – a collection of landmark buildings in South Quay that are designated as scheduled monuments.

The South Quay area in Great Yarmouth, with the former Nelson museum to the right (Image: Google)

The properties were built as Georgian merchant’s houses and they played an important part during Yarmouth’s seafaring heyday.

The Nelson Museum, which housed hundreds of artefacts related to Admiral Horatio Nelson – who led the British navy to victory during the Battle of Trafalgar against French and Spanish fleets, at the expense of his own life – shut in 2019 after being open for 17 years.