WALLINGFORD Museum’s £500,000 extension project has been scrapped, after 177 funding applications failed.

The volunteer-run museum at Flint House, in High Street, has raised more than £60,000 for the timber-framed building since last year.

But the project has received just three pledges of money after making 180 applications to grant-giving bodies.

Managing director Stuart Dewey said calling a halt to the project was the right thing to do.

He said: “We’re sitting on people’s money and we feel it’s going on for too long. If we don’t see any results that puts us in a morally bad situation.

“The problem is the present financial situation.

“It wasn’t good when we started and it has worsened as we have gone along.

“The only honest thing to do is to say we can’t do it in the present circumstances, unless there’s a fairly major change in financial circumstances.

“It would be irresponsible as charity trustees to run the risk of further costs.”

The medieval-style extension, to include a new gallery and education space, was given planning permission in March last year.

But work was delayed as the museum trustees struggled to find funding.

Mr Dewey said the board was now talking to the Charity Commission about returning the donations it had received.

But he said a new storage area for the museum was still needed. He said: “We’re bursting at the seams. Our collections have filled all our storage spaces.”

He added: “The needs of the museum will be reviewed and other affordable options considered to address at least some of the issues.

“The annexe was a great vision, but regrettably, as it turns out, at the wrong time.”

Curator Judy Dewey added: “We’ll have to go down a different route perhaps but we have not given up.”

Town mayor Bernard Stone said: “It’s disappointing in the short term, but in all the circumstances, securing the long-term future of the museum is the priority and when circumstances are better, the whole thing might be reviewed.”

Former project manager Norman Guiver resigned in May last year after the museum board said that it would own the new building.

Mr Guiver had argued that it should be owned by the community.

He said: “I’m very disappointed that a project that would have been such a benefit to the local community was undermined by the museum itself.”