SAS soldier's priceless archive may never open to public
BBCAn archive containing the belongings of Special Air Service (SAS) founder Blair "Paddy" Mayne is unable to open to the public.
The curator of the collection, David McCallion, said the situation was a "complete nightmare".
The War Years Remembered collection is a not-for-profit charity but has been unable to gain accreditation as a museum.
The Department for Communities (DfC) said that only accredited museums are eligible to apply for funding to any of its open grant schemes.
"Departmental officials and NI Museums Council staff met War Years Remembered in August 2025 and provided a range of advice regarding a possible route to accreditation," a spokesperson said.
But McCallion told BBC News NI the building the collections were in, a warehouse in Newtownards, needed major renovation.
McCallion said he was facing a "chicken and egg" situation with the DfC and the Northern Ireland Museums Council (NIMC).
"They point blankly said that they couldn't give us any money because we weren't an accredited museum," he said.
"That's chicken and egg as far as the volunteers and everybody else is concerned.
"All we want to do is get back into the public domain, and make the collection accessible to the public again.
"It's just been a complete nightmare for everybody."
Who was Blair 'Paddy' Mayne?
Mayne went to Regent House School in Newtownards before studying law at Queen's University Belfast and volunteered for service at the start of World War Two.
He was one of the founder members of the SAS and led a mission in November 1941 that was to be its first major success - an attack on an Axis airfield in Libya, which saw dozens of enemy aircraft destroyed.
In January 1943 he took command of the SAS and went on to lead his men in Sicily before the SAS took part in the Allied invasion of Normandy and onwards to Germany.
Mayne's portrayal in the BBC drama SAS Rogue Heroes was controversial.
What items are in the archive?
The Blair Mayne archive contains Mayne's SAS uniform, medals and even his wartime trunk for his belongings with his address in Newtownards marked on the lid.
There are also certificates marking some of the medals Mayne was awarded, including the Distinguished Service Order and the Legion d'Honneur.
Much of the material in the archive has not been seen in public.
The archive also has a journal Blair Mayne kept on a post-war expedition with the Falkland Island Dependencies Survey to Antarctica.
"Blair was not just, as people will know, an elite warrior, he was a solicitor, secretary of the law society, elite sportsman," McCallion said.
"There's everything from his early days of rugby, the British Lions tour of 1938, as well as personal family stuff.
"It has mostly his items but it also has other members of the Mayne family that served."
Why can't the collection be made public?
The warehouse the collections are in needs major renovation and curation works.
McCallion said that the volunteers who run the charity "didn't sign up to take on the stress of fighting to keep a building open" or "giving their time and feeling worthless for".
"The collection is not getting properly conserved at the minute, which is another worrying factor," he said.
"We're tourism, we're education, we've had coaches with people coming from the [cruise] boats, we've had Americans come and visit because of the Irish-American connection.
"We also tell the story of the Polish, the Americans, the Gibraltarian refugees that were here during the war and even the Kinderfarm at Millisle.
"All we want to do is make sure it's back in the public domain."
North Down MP Alex Easton has written to Northern Ireland Secretary Hillary Benn to invite him to visit the War Years Remembered collection and to assess what support the government can provide to secure its future.
"This is not just a local museum, it is a collection of national and international significance," Easton said.
"A collection of this importance should not be left struggling."
Ards and North Down Borough Council has previously provided a grant of £50,000 to War Years Remembered.
What have officials said?
A DfC spokesperson said NIMC was the lead body supporting local museums and it can assist private collectors to gain accreditation through a UK-wide scheme.
"Accreditation provides assurance that a museum's collections are being managed properly and in line with the sector's standards," they said.
"All local museums which attain this standard and are members of the Council are eligible to apply for funding to any of its open grant schemes."
Departmental officials and NIMC staff met with War Years Remembered in August 2025 and "provided a range of advice" regarding a possible route to accreditation, the spokesperson added.
In a statement, NIMC director Heather McGuicken said that "at the present point in time we are only able to give out grant funding to accredited museums, but even so the amount of grant money we distribute to our sector is small".
"Unfortunately, we do not have the remit or the funding to extend this to non-accredited museums," she said.
"I did meet Mr McCallion and some of the volunteers on site on the 29 August 2025 and discussed with them NIMCs limitations with regards to funding but offered to work with them regarding the possibilities of getting accredited status and the areas the scheme requires including organisational health, collections care and management, users and their experiences.
"They never got back to me.
"NIMC is more than happy to help them go through the application step by step, but we need them to start the process.
"We cannot provide funding for them to open, unfortunately, but there are many other ways we can help."
