Ambitious plans to transform a popular Norfolk museum have been dealt a blow after lottery officials turned down a multi-million-pound bid to pay for the proposed revamp.
Museum bosses had hoped to secure £4.3m from the National Lottery's Heritage Fund for major changes at the Time and Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth and lodged an application for the cash last year.
However, when the lottery fund's decision-making board met last month to consider the various bids for cash, the Yarmouth project was not selected to receive funding.
Museum chiefs say they still want to make the Changing Tides - Shaping Our Great Yarmouth project a reality and intend to submit a fresh application for cash.
Steve Miller, head of Norfolk Museums Service, said: "The outcome of the bid to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for improvements to Time and Tide Museum of Great Yarmouth Life has not been successful on this occasion.
"We received some very useful feedback from the Heritage Fund assessors which we are currently reviewing. This will help us reshape our plans for another bid in the near future.
"Our ambition to refresh the galleries at Time and Tide remains very much live and we look forward to working to make these a reality."
The mooted revamp would create new spaces for visitors, including by enclosing the museum's courtyard with a glazed roof.
It would also provide a space which the museum could use to host larger public events, while protecting the museum's fleet of historic fishing boats.
READ MORE: Great Yarmouth Time and Tide's dinosaur exhibition starts
The upper floors of the museum would also be given a revamp, with digital technology used to make visits more interactive.
Museum bosses are also looking to forge a new partnership with the renowned Royal Museums Greenwich in London, to bring objects from that collection to Great Yarmouth.
The museum, in Blackfriars Road, opened in a former Victorian herring curing works in 2004.
It is considered the best preserved curing works on the East Coast, and among the best in the whole of the UK.
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