About the Client
The World Rugby Museum is a sports museum based within the South Stand of Twickenham Stadium, London. It boasts an impressive collection of rugby memorabilia with over 37,000 items, including: boots, balls, jerseys, programmes, match-tickets, books and other assorted paraphernalia.
The museum was initially opened as The Museum of Rugby in 1996, becoming the World Rugby Museum in 2007. After renovations, it re-opened in early February 2018.
The Requirement
The World Rugby Museum has the most extensive collection of rugby memorabilia in the world, including over 25,000 objects, 7,000 pieces of archival material and 7-8,000 photographs and artworks. The collection includes RFU collection, the Harry Langton Collection and the RFU Rugby Archive. The museum collection even contains high profile items including the Calcutta Cup and the 2003 Rugby World Cup.
During 2017, with their collection expanding rapidly, the team at The World Rugby Museum were looking for ways to both maximise their collection storage areas, and ensure the correct storage and cataloging of their vast number of items. With collection items that varied massively by weight and size, the team needed flexible collection storage solutions that would both keep their inventory safe, whilst adapting to their changing needs.
As the museum was also in a constant state of change (with displays constantly evolving) any collection storage solution needed to ensure items were quick to find, deposit and retrieve.
With all these points in mind the museum team contacted Rackline, the experts in the design and fit of collection storage for museums. Rackline’s teams visited site , audited their space, and examined the vast collection of objects. They then worked with their design department to come up with solutions that would fulfill their needs.
The Solution
With a large storage area located within the East stand of the Twickenham stadium, the team recommended banks of its time tested, space saving Monotrak roller racking system combined with tailored solutions to encompass the requirements of the numerous items being stored.
The Monotrak roller racking solution was chosen due to the flat concrete floor. The system and it’s rails could be fitted directly to the surface of the collection store without the need for a floating floor, or heavy engineering works. This was topped with Rackline’s Proform shelving solution, drawer units and garment rails to fit the needs of the collection. These were complemented with static shelving at either end of the room to add further storage capacity.
Shelving was configured at a range of heights and depths to hold loose items, books, boxes and files. Special adaptations were made to shelves for the vertical storage of framed pictures and artworks, These ensured they were kept in best conditions. Shelves are all adjustable by their teams, to adapt to their changing needs.
In total Rackline installed 58 bays of storage shelving, providing 299.20 linear meters of high capacity, flexible storage.
Find Out More
If you work within a museum or archive, and you’re looking to reconfigure, add to or create a collections storage area, then get in touch our teams. Call us on 01782 770144. email info@rackline.co.uk or fill in the form below. Our teams are here to help, and guide you through maximising your space, improving efficiency and keeping your valuable collection safe.