AN USK museum could soon be handed over to its trustees.

Monmouthshire council’s cabinet is being asked to agree to sell Usk Rural Life Museum and a small area of Maryport Street car park to the Trust which runs it.

The museum houses a collection of over 5,000 artefacts from hand tools to agricultural machinery as well as specialist collections which portray rural life in Monmouthshire over a century between 1850 and 1950. It is said to have the best collection of its kind in Britain.

It is based in a 16th century malt barn and adjoining buildings and attracts between 1,600 and 2,800 visitors, including groups and schools, each year and is managed by a group of trustees and run mainly by volunteers, who clock up more than 5,000 hours a year.

The trustees said that buying the museum would enable them to modernise and develop the building and have plans to build a new visitor centre with the help of a grant.

They need a small area of the car park to build a new entrance, for which they have planning permission that amounts to the loss of one parking space. The council’s car parks officer has agreed to the sale of the land.

The Trustees have 37 years left on a lease with the council which has enabled them to make substantial improvements such as restoration of the inside of the barn, building two more barns and a community room.

The site would be sold with a clause that prevents to site from being used for anything other than a museum.

The cabinet is due to make a decision at its monthly meeting on July 17.