Wales to create its first museum of football with national lottery funding

The town of Wrexham has received more than £2.7m in national lottery funding to help create Wales’s first national football museum.

The museum will celebrate the story of grassroots and professional Welsh football by showcasing memorabilia dating back centuries, while situating this in the broader cultural heritage of Wrexham and north Wales.

A quarter of the collection is considered special or rare, with exhibits including Billy Meredith’s cap from the Scotland v Wales match played on 5 March 1910 and John Charles’s debut shirt for Wales v Ireland from March 1950.

The funding will underpin a continuing project splitting the Wrexham Museum building into two separate but linked institutions: a refurbished museum for Wrexham and a football museum for Wales. The museum is closed for renovation and is due to reopen in 2026.

The extra funds will allow the museum to buy a significant private collection of memorabilia, including international match programmes dating from 1901 and material relating to Cardiff City’s 1927 FA Cup final victory.

Wrexham has a long history of football and considers itself one of the sport’s spiritual homes. The town’s Wrexham Association Football Club is the oldest club in Wales and the third-oldest professional association football team in the world.

Paul Roberts, Wrexham county borough council lead member for partnerships and community safety, said: “This is huge news for Wrexham. The new museum is set to become a major new national attraction for the city, drawing new visitors from all over Wales and beyond, and playing a key role at the heart of Wrexham’s burgeoning tourism and cultural offer.”

He said the funding would “help us transform one of our city’s landmark buildings into a world-class venue where the rich history of our county borough will be celebrated alongside the eventful story of Welsh football, preserved for future generations to discover and enjoy for years to come”.

The museum received the funding as part of a £7.6m boost to rare collections, which also funded the Diving Museum in Gosport, the Leach Pottery Museum in St Ives, Aberdeenshire Museum, the Egypt Exploration Society and the Lancashire Cricket Heritage Experience.

Eilish McGuinness, the chief executive of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, said the museums were selected for funding for their “incredible diversity and brilliance”.

“These projects will inspire visitors of all ages, with many of these collections being revealed for the first time, and all will connect people with the individual stories of sport, diving, pottery, archaeology and much more, adding up to a national story covering all the many and varied heritage we have to offer,” she said.

The museum renovation is also supported by funding from Wrexham council and the Welsh government, with additional support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Wolfson Foundation, as well as £1.3m from the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.