A new bespoke museum – the first to appear in London for 40 years – will soon be popping up in Pinner.
The William Heath Robinson Trust has spent decades collecting and preserving the work of the celebrated illustrator, who spent much of his life in the area.
It is now on the cusp of completing its project, which has been in the pipeline since it was given the go ahead by the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2012.
The project is still short £140,000 of its final required total, with an opening date of October expected. Donations are being requested through the trust’s website.
The project will see West House in Pinner, which is already a cultural centre and war memorial, extended to make space for the museum.
The collection of artworks is currently housed at Harrow Museum Store but is eagerly awaiting its new home so it can be gazed upon by fans.
“We are lodgers there under sufferance,” Geoffrey Bare, a trustee of the William Heath Robison Trust, told the Independent.
“They will be relieved when we can move out into our own space.”
Robinson’s cartoons of incredibly complex contraptions used to achieve simple results raised his profile in the early 20th Century. He earned a permanent place in the English vernacular when the phrase “Heath Robinson contraption” entered the dictionary in 1912.
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