At a meeting on 2 September 2025, Councillor Raiff Devlin, Cabinet Member for Customers, Digital and Community Services, approved the disposal of several items from the collections of Y Lanfa Museum, Welshpool, Llanidloes Museum, and Radnorshire Museum. Councillor Devlin also delegated authority to the Professional Lead Arts and Culture to sell any items that are not disposed of via other means.

Museum Collections Appraisal

Councillor Raiff Devlin approved the disposal of items from the collections of three museums: Y Lanfa Museum, Welshpool, Llanidloes Museum, and Radnorshire Museum, in accordance with the disposal procedures outlined in the council's Collections Development Policy. He also granted delegated authority to the Professional Lead Arts and Culture to sell items not otherwise disposed of.

The decision was made following an appraisal of the museum collections, supported by an external specialist. The appraisal identified items for disposal based on criteria such as:

• Provenance
• Condition, including potential conservation/repair costs
• Relevance to Montgomeryshire and current collecting policy
• Potential for display
• Rarity/uniqueness/historical/scientific importance
• Duplicates

The report stated that the disposals are driven by curatorial reasons, not financial ones, and that any money received from the disposal of items will be used solely for the benefit of the collections, as per the Collections Development Policy.

Appendix B of the Public reports pack lists the items to be disposed of, including:

• Set Dressing Furniture including pine cupboards, a glass front cupboard, a desk, a small cupboard, and a sack cart from Llanidloes Museum, described as having no local significance, being in poor condition, or both.
• An Altar Frontal from Llanidloes Museum, described as being in extremely poor condition with no artistic and historical integrity .
• Paintings from Y Lanfa Museum, described as falling outside the museum's collection policy due to a lack of provable local significance. The paintings include sketches, watercolours, and oil paintings depicting various subjects such as street scenes, animals, landscapes, and portraits.
• Magazines and Journals from Y Lanfa Museum, including a variety of publications dating from the early 20th century to the 1980s, such as knitting patterns, home crafts, gardening, military modelling, and current affairs magazines.
• Books from Y Lanfa Museum, including official guide books, hobby annuals, dictionaries, grammar books, and various works of fiction and non-fiction.
• Newspapers from Y Lanfa Museum, including issues of The General Evening Post, The Times Literary Supplement, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express, and The Illustrated London News, dating from the 18th to the 20th centuries.
• General Items from Y Lanfa Museum, including fire bellows, pot hooks, a spit, a cart jack, sauce bottles, sewing machines, wireless receivers, bottles from local breweries, roof tiles, tins, a mirror, dairying bowls, dolls, games, and toys.
• General Items from Llanidloes Museum, including a shop counter, replica farm tools, a wood saw, a wooden bench, a farrier's block, a cheese press, bellows, a butter churn, a winnowing machine, a blacksmith's forge, a rocking horse, a washing plunger, and a travel typewriter.
• General Items from Radnorshire Museum, including crutches and walking sticks from Llandrindod Hospital, a bust of The Duke of Wellington¹, a school desk, adding machines, badgers in a glass case, and a mail coach and horses.