A PIECE of history will be moved from its home next week and put in storage for work to start on a new museum.
Grace Darling became a national heroine after she rowed a flat-bottomed fishing boat, known as a coble, through stormy seas from the Longstone Lighthouse, off North-umberland, to rescue sailors on the SS Forfarshire, in 1838.
A hundred years after the rescue, a museum opened in nearby Bamburgh in her honour, with the coble as its centrepiece.
Most of the building is soon to be demolished to make way for the RNLI Grace Darling museum, and the coble will be put into storage at Beamish Museum, in County Durham, until next year. RNLI heritage manager Dr Joanna Bellis said the 21ft coble, which was built more than 170 years ago, must be handled carefully by a specialist removals team.
She said: "The coble has always been the heart of the Grace Darling Museum and seeing it come out of the building will be a symbolic moment."
It will be in storage until summer 2007, when the £1.4m museum will open.
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