The £150,000 Heritage Resource Centre at Mersea Island Museum in Essex has opened.

The 80sq m (860sq ft) was paid for with a £45,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), with additional funding coming from the Hervey Benham Trust and public donations.

The Heritage Resource Centre provides an area for learning and to enable children to do creative work during school visits or as individual visitors, as well as providing the museum with room to store its archive material in the proper conditions and to display its digitised images on computer screens.

The museum will be creating a new maritime display, in the old shop area of the main Museum Hall, which will show the design, build and sail making aspects of boats, together with a history of the local oystering and fishing industry.