AMBITIOUS plans for a new £3m museum for Petersfield have been unveiled.

The current museum site, which is housed in the old courthouse building off St Peter’s Road, will be expanded into the police station to create what trustees say will be “the cultural centre of Hampshire’s South Downs.”

Those behind the project believe the new-look museum, which will be linking up with the South Downs National Park Authority to create a new visitor gateway to the park, will help to attract thousands more visitors to the town every year.

The police station and courthouse will be restored and revamped to create new display areas, which will bring an 85 per cent increase to what is currently on display to visitors.

The Victorian features of the buildings will be retained and areas like the police cells will be brought back to life with artefacts telling the story of policing in Hampshire over the last 180 years.

The new display areas will be able to feature far more of the Flora Twort and historic Bedales costume collections than before, with the story of the current digs on the Heath being told through social history and archaeology displays which will chart the town and surrounding area’s past.

New temperature controlled storage facilities will allow visitors to have access to the museum’s entire collections of almost 19,000 artefacts for the first time, and these facilities will also include the creation of an Edward Thomas study centre, allowing access to Tim Wilton-Steer’s significant collection relating to the poet who died in 1917.

The courthouse building will be converted into a 50- seater lecture hall and learning space and other facilities will include a cafe, entrance foyer and retail area.

Police staff will vacate the station building by September 2016 and the new facilities are expected to be fully open to the public in 2020.

Two public consultations on the museum plans are to be held in St Peter’s Hall, which is in St Peter’s Road in Petersfield. The first one is this Saturday from 1-6pm and the second one is on October 31 from 9am-6pm.

Curator Kathrin Pieren and museum trustees will be on hand to give presentations, answer questions and seek the public’s view on the plans.