THE government’s Culture Minister visited an east Cleveland mining museum as a call was made to give it national status to secure its future.

Ed Vaizey had a tour of the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum when he came to show his support for the prospective Conservative candidate for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, Will Goodhand.

The Culture Minster heard from volunteers how the museum had enjoyed its busiest year ever last year but any plans to expand were being thwarted by their inability to secure capital funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

The constituency’s current MP, Labour’s Tom Blenkinsop, says he has written to the minister in a bid to secure extra funding to turn it into a national museum.

Speaking after his visit, Mr Vaizey said: “As a government we have invested more money into museums but it’s a valid point about the Heritage Lottery Fund and it is something that I will take up with them.

“Children who visit this museum must find it fascinating, I certainly did, it brings ironstone mining to life.”

Addressing Mr Blenkinsop’s plea, he said: “I will speak with the Science Museum and see if we can create something similar to the National Mining Museum. It would make sense that a museum like this could use the expertise of staff there.”

Mr Goodhand said: “Iron is part of the area’s heritage and it should be celebrated. The work the volunteers do at the museum is really important to the area and it needs to be supported.”

Janette Holt, who was on the original organising committee in 1978, said she hoped the visit would help secure the future of the museum.

She said: “Last year we had more than 14,000 visitors to the museum, our best total yet, but if we want to get more people in we need to find money to expand and we can’t satisfy the HLF to get capital to pay for any work.”

The day Mr Vaizey visited the museum, Mr Blenkinsop said he wrote to the Culture Minister to ask for it to receive national status.

He said: “My reason for renewing this call is due to the fact that Redcar and Cleveland Council is now proposing, as part of their long term public realm work, to look to the preservation of our last two surviving sets of ironstone mine buildings at Margrove Park and Skelton as interpretative sites of our old core industry - an industry that shaped East Cleveland. These sites would be linked by dedicated footpaths to the Skinningrove Museum.

“To properly develop such a scheme and to build on it, I feel it is crucial that the Skinningrove Museum should be granted ‘National Museum’ status by the Department of Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS).”