A NORTH-EAST museum is celebrating a record number of visitors this year,

This week, Bowes Museum, in Barnard Castle, County Durham, welcomed its 100,000th visitor of the financial year.

With another two months to go until the end of the financial year, the museum is hoping this could rise to 110,000.

Visitor numbers dropped to about 60,000 in the 1990s, and are the highest since the museum became a charitable trust in 2000.

The last time they were this high was in the 1970s.

The museum's director, Adrian Jenkins, said: "Before the end of March, we have new exhibitions on Boucher, the fashion photographer Norman Parkinson and the British Museum's major Sudan: Ancient Treasures exhibition, which is a real coup for the Bowes."

The 100,000th visitor was Rena Allen, a friend of the museum, who was visiting with her son, William, who was on holiday from Australia.

She was given free entry and a bottle of champagne.

She said: "It was my son's last day and we wanted to go to the museum, I was just saying to him how successful the museum was doing when we were told we were the 100,000th visitor.

"It was a wonderful surprise. We are very fortunate to have the museum and we were delighted for ourselves, but delighted for the success of the museum as well."

This year, the museum launched a £6m appeal to repair the roof and develop gallery and exhibition space.