AN ANONYMOUS donor has given £1.45m to help build a single museum for Oxfordshire’s regimental collections.

Today, the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Trust revealed it had been pledged the cash – which means it can start drawing up plans for the £4m museum and organising a lease with the county council for the site in the grounds of the Oxfordshire Museum, in Woodstock.

Trust chairman Brigadier Ian Inshaw said: “This is fantastic news. We are grateful and delighted that our donor is willing to support us in this way.

“We have cash pledges for just under half of our £4m target, with arrangements in place to allow contracts to be let while we raise the other half. The project is now going ahead.”

Project manager Major Hugh Babington Smith said that the trust would apply for planning permission later this year, and hoped the museum would open in late 2011 or early 2012.

He added: “In the meantime our museum team continues to work on the collections, put on exhibitions like the two currently at Woodstock, and help the public from our present base at Caversfield.”