This is how Doncaster’s £14 million new museum looked when the lights were finally switched on for the first time

Builders who are carrying out work to create the town centre landmark on Waterdale have now carried out their lighting tests – showing for the first time how the frontage will look.

It shows the former Doncaster High School for Girls building, cleaned and illuminated by floodlights for the first time, as it will appear when the doors open. They also show the open area outside the new building.

The lighting improves the visibility of the former school building, which had been difficult to see through the glass frontage until now.

When it opens, the new attraction will house the town’s museum, art gallery and library, and will be called the Danum Gallery, Library and Museum, after Free Press readers voted for that name in an online poll.

Work is still going on before the scheme is competed.

The museum will improve the way the borough’s railway heritage is celebrated in the town.

Railway tracks have been installed inside and when the museum opens, they are intended to hold two steam engines, expected to be loaned to the venue. The same room will also house railway memorabilia from the Hall Cross Collection. It will also allow for national touring exibitions to be held in Doncaster for the first time.

Project manager Peter Wilson said the building is set up to allow an easy rotation of exhibits, so that visitors should be able to return each month and see different items from the museum’s collection.

The Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry museum will also be relocated there from its previous based at the existing museum on Chequer Road.

One of the local conservationists working on on the scheme, Graham Key, this week described how he was liaising with contractors over the removal of the regiment’s 5th battalion memorial from the Chequer Road venue, ahead of its installation in the new building.

He said its original location was at the drill hall, Doncaster.

He said on Twitter: “Doncaster’s new ‘Danum Gallery, Library and Museum’ really shaping up now! Hope to see some of the objects I’ve worked on in the new spaces soon.

“It’s going to be quite a site when it’s finished.”