Museum finds duplicates of destroyed drawings

Staff at a Kent museum have found duplicate copies of some of the 1,742 historic military drawings destroyed while in transit to Scotland for digitisation.

Drawings from the Royal Engineers Museum in Gillingham, worth an estimated £500,000, were inside a van that was stolen and set alight in West Lothian last month.

Technical drawings and plans were included in the collection, as well as drawings related to the design and construction of the D-Day Mulberry harbours, railways and bridging.

Museum director Rebecca Nash said the discovery of the duplicate copies was "brilliant".

She added: "We can now look at plugging some of the gaps that have been caused by the loss of this material."

The director said the team had received "a lot of really nice messages of support from all over the country" since the theft.

"As a team of curators, we worked really hard to ensure that the material we look after in the museum is safeguarded," she added.

Police Scotland has launched an appeal for information.

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