A BID to create a £36m Great Museum for the North moved a step closer yesterday.

Assessors from the Heritage Lottery Fund visited Newcastle to hear plans for the project, a joint bid by Newcastle City Council, Tyne and Wear Museums and Newcastle University.

The partnership has submitted an £18m bid to the fund, to help combine four museums across the city.

If it goes ahead, it will see the Hancock Museum upgraded and linked by a footbridge to university buildings on the other side of Claremont Road.

The complex would merge the natural history and ethnography collections at the Hancock with the university's Greek and Etruscan art collection presently housed in the Shefton Museum.

It would also include the prehistoric and Roman collections in the Museum of Antiquities.

The partnership has appointed architecture firm Terry Farrell and Partners to come up with a design for the museum.

The company was behind eye-catching buildings such as Charing Cross Station, the London headquarters of MI6 and the International Centre for Life, in Newcastle.

Paul Collard, from the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative, said: "The new museum will showcase some of the region's most wonderful collections, opening them up to local people and visitors alike.

"In doing so, it will provide a world-class counterpart to the remarkable developments on the quaysides such as Baltic and the Sage Gateshead, and be an anchor for the future development of the north end of the city."