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Expansion plans at Lochaber's West Highland Museum

Chris Heaton/Geograph A picture of the West Highland Museum, which is two storey Victorian building. It has large windows and Doric portico doorways. Chris Heaton/Geograph
More space is needed at the increasingly busy West Highland Museum

The West Highland Museum in Fort William could be expanded to create more space for visitors and exhibitions.

Planning permission is being sought to partially demolish an old dairy building behind the museum so an extension can be built.

Trustees hope to secure £4.5m of funding for the redevelopment project.

The museum in the town's Cameron Square is popular with fans of the Outlander books and TV series who come to see its large collection of objects associated with the Jacobite cause.

In 2012 the museum attracted about 9,000 visitors, but since then it has become free to enter and last year 59,000 people came to view its displays.

Chairman Ian Peter MacDonald said the building was "really creaking" and they were not able to offer as good a welcome as they would like.

Ian Peter MacDonald A large derelict building with crumbling white washed render. There are boarded up windows and the area next to the building looks overgrown and abandoned. Ian Peter MacDonald
A derelict building behind the museum would be partially demolished under the plans

Mr MacDonald said: "At the back we have really quite a lot of unused space and we want to transform the experience of being in the museum.

"We want to create new exhibition rooms, improve the archive conditions, develop an education space and we are going to develop a garden so that people from the town can pop in and enjoy a moment of relaxation."

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